Clean Up City of St. Augustine, Florida

Call or Write Tennessee State Senator STACEY CAMPFIELD, Homophobic Republican Sponsor of "Don't Say Gay" Bill in Tennessee Legislature

2012-01-31T15:15:00.000-08:00

Senator Stacey Campfield
R-Knoxville
District 7 — Part of Knox County — Map

District address

2011 Flagler
Knoxville, TN 37912

Nashville address
301 6th Avenue North
Suite 4 Legislative Plaza
Nashville, TN 37243
Phone (615) 741-1766
sen.stacey.campfield@capitol.tn.gov

Washington Post: Five Florida Counties Key to Today's Republican Primary

2012-01-31T15:07:00.000-08:00

Actual Washington Post photo of a Tampa, Florida polling place today
(In St. Johns County, some 2/3 of our polling places are in conservative churches. Not one is in a synagogue. Notice the Christian art in the polling place. This offends the First Amendment -- voting should be in schools and other government buildings, not in churches, except as a last resort).

Five counties to watch in the Florida primary
Posted by Chris Cillizza at 12:52 PM ET, 01/31/2012

Today’s Florida primary features the largest and most diverse electorate of any contest to date in the Republican presidential primary fight.

TAMPA, FL - JANUARY 31: Ray Roy sets up a polling station as they prepare for voters on primary day on January 31, 2012 in Tampa, Florida. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney enters election day with a clear polling lead although former House Speaker Newt Gingrich pledged this morning that “I’m not going to lose big in Florida.”

Most precincts — 94 percent, actually — close at 7 p.m. eastern time while a handful of polling places in the state’s Panhandle region close at 8 p.m.

Given the size and complexity of the Florida electorate, we polled a bunch of Sunshine State Republican strategists in search of the five counties they will be watching as leading indicators of not only who will win tonight but also of how the swing state is trending heading into the general election.

Their picks — plus a smattering of our own sense and that of the Twitterverse — produced what we think is a great CliffsNotes version of where to watch as ballots start to get counted tonight. Our five counties to watch are below — and listed in alphabetical order.

(And at the bottom is a special bonus: county-by-county results from the 2008 race, in which John McCain beat Romney 36 percent to 31 percent. Included in the chart are how much Romney won or lost each county by, and our projections for how well he needs to do in each county in order to win.)

Have a key county of your own that we didn’t mention? Throw it in the comments section!

The Fix’s top 5 Florida counties to watch

* Brevard: If there is a county where Gingrich’s pledge to have a permanent colony on the moon by the end of his second term will resonate, it’s this one where Cape Canaveral is located. Cuts to NASA plus a large tea party contingent mean that Brevard could be the epicenter of conservative anger (and turnout) both today and in the fall. In the 2008 Florida Republican presidential primary, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) beat Romney by 5 points in Brevard, which mirrored his statewide margin. In the fall election, McCain beat then Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) 55 percent to 44 percent

* Duval: This Jacksonville-centered county is home to voters who are, in the words of one veteran Florida operative, “more like a Georgian than a Floridian”. It’s culturally conservative and big — one Florida strategist estimated that 10 percent of the GOP primary vote will come from the Jacksonville media market. This is one of the areas where Romney ran strongest in 2008 against McCain — he carried Duval 41 percent to 27 percent — and he’ll need to replicate (or improve on) that performance to break 40 percent tonight. (Worth noting: Much of Romney’s Florida leadership team has their political roots in Duval County.)

* Miami-Dade: This is the key south Florida county and will be read as a sign of how Hispanics feel about Romney and Gingrich. Miami-Dade was Romney’s Waterloo in 2008 — he lost by more than 52,000 votes to McCain in the county (former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani actually came in second!), a margin that Romney could never make up statewide. (McCain won Florida by roughly 97,000 votes total.) If Romney runs stronger here tonight, Republicans will argue that it bodes well for his chances of narrowing the gap against Obama in the fall; Obama won Miami-Dade by 16 points over McCain in 2008.

* Orange: Turn on any television or read any political blog or newspaper and you will quickly grasp that the I-4 corridor, which runs from Orlando in the east to Tampa Bay in the west is the most critical region in this Republican presidential primary. (Heck, the Fix family’s new favorite show — “RockCenter with Brian Williams” — did a segment on the I-4 corridor last night.) Orange County, which houses Orlando, is as good a barometer as there is when it comes to determining how the I-4 corridor will vote. (It also is an early reporting county.) In the 2008 primary, the county was basically a draw as McCain beat Romney by 435 votes. Romney needs a far stronger showing in tonight’s voting. One other bonus for paying attention to Orange: It will be a very competitive county in the general election. Obama won it with 59 percent in 2008, but four years earlier Sen. John Kerry (Mass.) won it by .2 percent of the vote, a margin of 815 votes out of more than 388,000 votes cast.

* Pinellas: Nestled in the Bay Area — Tampa Bay, that is — Pinellas has an interesting amalgam of large churches populated by evangelicals and more moderate suburbanites. It’s also an older county; roughly one in five residents were over 65 years old, according to the 2010 Census. Pinellas runs a very aggressive absentee vote program; as of yesterday, more than 62,000 votes had been cast by absentee ballot in Pinellas. This was McCain territory in 2008 as he won it by 10,000 votes over Romney. It’s also likely to be a swing area in November; in 2004 then-President George W. Bush won it by 226 votes out of more than 550,000 cast.

With Aaron Blak

Huffington Post: Stacey Campfield, Tennessee Senator Behind 'Don't Say Gay' Bill, Removed From Knoxville Restaurant After Anti-Gay Remarks

2012-01-31T14:59:00.000-08:00

Tennessee Senator Stacey Campfield's proposed "Don't Say Gay" law continues to divide residents -- but one local restaurateur made her views on the legislation resoundingly clear this weekend.

As Metropulse and Towleroad are reporting, Martha Boggs, the owner of Knoxville's The Bistro at the Bijou, asked Campfield to leave after he tried to dine at her establishment.

Following the incident, Boggs posted a status on her restaurant's Facebook page which read, "I hope that Stacy (sic) Campfield now knows what it feels like to be unfairly discriminated against."

Metropulse reports that Boggs later clarified her actions in an interview. "I didn't want his hate in my restaurant," she said. "I told him he wasn't welcome here. ... I feel like he's gone from being stupid to being dangerous, and I wanted to stand up to him." Boggs is also due to appear on HuffPost Gay Voices Editor-at-Large Michelangelo Signorile's radio program on SiriusXM OutQ today to talk about the experience.

Many have been quick to applaud Boggs' actions on Facebook. "You didn't unfairly discriminate against Stacey Campfield," one user praised. "You have the right to refuse service to anyone, especially a poorly educated bigot."

Still, another user added, "Denying service to a man because you don't agree with his opinions is no different than denying service to a man because you don't like his skin color."

Boggs' actions come on the heels of an interview Campfield gave last week to Signorile, in which the senator made controversial statements on the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the media's supposed "glorification" of homosexuals.

"Most people realize that AIDS came from the homosexual community -- it was one guy screwing a monkey, if I recall correctly, and then having sex with men. It was an airline pilot, if I recall," he said in the interview. "My understanding is that it is virtually -- not completely, but virtually -- impossible to contract AIDS through heterosexual sex...very rarely [transmitted]."

Alan Grayson on NEWT GINGRICH's Delusions of Adequacy

2012-01-31T14:04:00.000-08:00

A few days ago, when I heard about Newt Gingrich’s plan/idea/hallucination to make the Moon the 51st State, I wondered what else he has in mind for the country we all love. (I mean America. And, for liberal Democrats, North Korea. Or at least that’s what Newt would say.)

Newt conducted a whirlwind campaign tour around my State of Florida this week. (Better late than never. No, actually, better never.) At the Space Coast, Newt explained what he wants NASA to do. I started to think through what other great plans/ideas/hallucinations that Newt might have in mind for the rest of us. A sort of a Contract With The Universe. Based on Newt’s lunar lunacy, here is what I think that we may see from Newt Gingrich, 45th President of the United States:

(1) Gingrich will direct the Army Corps of Engineers to drain the Mediterranean Sea. Gingrich will then lay claim to all of the land underneath it. And then he will put the screws to Crete. (Warning to Newt: this may hurt you with your key Tea Party constituent group, the Cretins.)

(2) Gingrich will create jobs in the construction industry by getting bids on a project to make the Washington Monument three times as large, and kind of smoother. Then he will rename it the “Washington Monument to Newt’s Greatness.”

(3) In order to qualify for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, Gingrich will make infants change their own diapers. You know, to show them the value of work.

(4) Gingrich will order the Pentagon’s DARPA weapons lab to erect a giant 10-gigawatt humidifier, and a giant 10-gigawatt dehumidifier. Turn them loose on each other. Let’s settle this, once and for all. (By the way, Steven Wright thought of this first.)

(5) Gingrich will command the Department of Energy to dig a hole deep down into the Earth’s crust, and fill it with soufflé. Think of how proud we will all feel, watch the world’s first geothermal soufflé rise. And rise. And rise.

(6) Gingrich will have the U.S. Postal Service deliver the mail by drone airplane. Just bomb the mailboxes. First with the mail, and then . . . .

(7) Gingrich will instruct NOAA to conduct a valid scientific test to see whether prayer can change the direction of hurricanes as they approach the shore. A double-blind test, so the hurricane doesn’t know.

(8) Gingrich will mandate that the National Institutes of Health develop a neurological examination to determine whether Newt Gingrich really is more intelligent than every other human being combined.

(9) Gingrich will compel all the tree-hugging liberals who work at the National Endowment for the Arts to translate the internet into Klingon. Including the porn. No, especially the porn.

(10) Gingrich will proclaim a Constitutional Amendment mandating that Newt Gingrich (a/k/a the “Great Leader”) be President of the Earth-Moon Alliance for life, and twenty years beyond that. Just work out the details.

You think I’m kidding. Well, don’t cling to that conclusion. Here are some actual things that Newt really said, and I’m not making any of them up:

“I have enormous personal ambition. I want to shift the entire planet. And I’m doing it. I am now a famous person. I represent real power.”

“Gingrich - Primary mission, Advocate of civilization, Definer of civilization, Teacher of the rules of civilization, Leader of the civilizing forces.”

Gingrich on Gingrich: “The most serious, systematic revolutionary of modern times.”

Newt Gingrich decides who lives and dies. When a reporter asked Gingrich what to do about the homeless a few days after the police shot a homeless man in front of the White House, Gingrich said: “Give the park police more ammo.”

And Newt Gingrich determines what is true and false. As he said a few weeks ago: “Any ad which quotes what I said on Sunday is a falsehood.”

Why is such an obvious megalomaniac considered to be a serious candidate for President? I don’t know. You would have to ask the Tea Party that question.

As for me, I have rather more modest ambitions than Newt does. I would like to try to help the 24 million Americans who can’t find full-time work. The 50 million Americans who can’t see a doctor when they are sick. The 47 million Americans who need government assistance to feed themselves. And the 40 million Americans who live in homes where the mortgage is more than the value of the home.

Let’s keep our eye on the ball, please.

Are you with me?

Courage,

Alan Grayson

Washington Post -- Q&A WIth Pulitzer Prize Winnning Columnist Eugene Robinson re: Romney vs. Gingrich

2012-01-31T13:01:00.000-08:00

Eugene Robinson Live: How Romney got the lead in Florida

T
Eugene Robinson is an Associate Editor and twice-weekly columnist for The Washington Post. His column appears on Tuesdays and Fridays. In a 25-year career at The Post, Robinson has been city hall reporter, city editor, foreign correspondent in Buenos Aires and London, foreign editor, and assistant managing editor in charge of the paper's award-winning Style section. In 2005, he started writing a column for the Op-Ed page. He is the author of "Coal to Cream: A Black Man's Journey Beyond Color to an Affirmation of Race" (1999) and "Last Dance in Havana" (2004). Robinson is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists and has received numerous journalism awards.

About the topic
From the heart of Miami, Eugene Robinson live chats with readers about the Florida primary, Mitt Romney's lead, and more. Submit questions and your opinions now.
Eugene Robinson :

Hi, folks. Welcome to this week's chat. I'm coming to you from South Beach, where I have to report that the weather -- not quite as nice as yesterday -- is still pretty nice. Hey, somebody has to cover the Republican primary... Let's get started.

–
January 31, 2012 1:02 PM
Permalink

Q.
Primary
Mr. Robinson, In your opinion, which Republican candidate has the best chance of defeating the incumbent in the general election? Your advice will be appreciated because I vote in the primary tomorrow. Thanks

–
January 30, 2012 7:42 PM
Permalink

A.
Eugene Robinson :

I feel compelled to give an honest answer, rather than suggest you vote for Ron Paul. All the polls suggest that Mitt Romney would be President Obama's toughest opponent this fall. We've learned in the past few weeks that Romney has vulnerabilities, but he's still the one who would give the president the toughest challenge.
– January 31, 2012 1:04 PM
Q.
Gingrich
Gene: You are without a doubt the best writer on the Post. You are steady, honest, and brilliant. Why can't we convince the public how dangerous it would be to have Gingrich as President. The only reason he soared above in South Carolina was because he did not answer any decent questions but he just ranted and raved so that he could not be cornered in. The speech he gave during the debate had already been heard twice earlier that day. He played his game once again. Help us to get rid of him. P.S. By the way, I am a former Republican who is a great supporter of the President! I just want to get rid of Gingrich once and for all.

–
January 31, 2012 5:33 AM
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A.
Eugene Robinson :

Thanks so much, but there are a lot of tremendous writers at The Post. You'll probably get your wish about Gingrich, but maybe not quite yet. He vows to go all the way to the convention, and if he has enough money I'm sure he'll do just that. But the Republican establishment is so set against him that there's no way, in my opinion, that he could actually win the nomination.
– January 31, 2012 1:06 PM
Q.
Romney's Lead
So I assume that Romney's team is trying to bury Gingrich as early as possible. But even if Florida is a big win for Romney doesn't Gingrich have enough money to keep going for a while? And does Gingrich have any chance of winning the nomination?

–
January 31, 2012 11:21 AM
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A.
Eugene Robinson :

Gingrich could run into money problems. He's okay as long as billionaire Sheldon Adelson keeps bankrolling the pro-Gingrich PAC, but there's a long stretch between now and Super Tuesday with few opportunities for Gingrich to put points on the board that would encourage campaign donations.
– January 31, 2012 1:08 PM
Q.
To the Moon, Newt!
How's his lunar colony idea playing? Should we expect him to carry the "Space Coast" of Brevard County?

–
January 31, 2012 12:53 PM
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A.
Eugene Robinson :

If Gingrich doesn't do well in the Space Coast, given his advocacy of lunar colonies and the like, then he'll have to chalk up Florida as a total failure. The buzz a couple of days ago was that if there was any movement here, it was toward Newt. But that seemed to fade yesterday.
– January 31, 2012 1:11 PM
Q.
Will networks "call the winner" right after Polls close in Panhandle of Florida?
Thanks for your columns and informed perspective -- I am wondering if viewers are going to be told who "won" as soon as the Poll and Ballot counters are actually able to present data or just "projections". It still amazes me that the Iowa Caucus final results are not what they seemed when the Victory speech was being given and Network Pundits were calling for Perry and Bachmann to leave the race within minutes or hours. Thanks for this information/opinion!

–
January 31, 2012 12:36 PM
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A.
Eugene Robinson :

Your recollection of election night in Iowa is a little off. The Romney-Santorum race was too close to call -- for all the networks -- until very late in the evening. In fact, when MSNBC went off the air, Santorum was leading by 27 votes -- but a couple of precincts were still out. The candidates both spoke, but nobody could claim victory. It wasn't until 3 a.m. or so when the state GOP announced that Romney had won by eight votes. Then, two weeks later, after a recanvass of the votes, the state party found that Santorum won after all. As for Perry and Bachmann, though, it was clear they hadn't done well -- and clear that their campaign treasuries would start to wither. Here in Florida, if the polls are right and Romney really has a big lead, the networks will probably call the race quite early.
– January 31, 2012 1:17 PM
Q.
Your accusations of racism are divisive (and laughable)
In a recent column, you "accused" Gingrich of "race-baiting" and went on to say, "Romney's approach, however, is more subtle. On Monday, he made the pitch that Obama had to be replaced right now, because if he remains in office for four more years, the country will be transformed into 'something we wouldn't recognize.' Bingo. The Obama Administration, to state the obvious, doesn't look like any of its predecessors." To state the obvious, Romney was not talking about a black-and-white photo of the Administration. He was talking about a fatal blow to the federal system envisioned by the Founders, with a federal government "delegated" "few and defined" powers, while the states "retained" "numerous and indefinite" ones in Madison's words. Your attempt to make something racial out of this is despicable but in keeping with your normal writings. "Stuff" like yours, at best, preserves the racial problems in this country, not ideas like Romney's.

–
January 31, 2012 12:36 PM
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A.
Eugene Robinson :

I stand by those columns. I notice you didn't defend Gingrich. As for what I wrote about Romney, you conveniently leave out the preceding paragraph, which reads as follows:

"Romney and Gingrich, especially, have taken pains to create the impression that there is something alien and illegitimate about the Obama presidency. They portray Obama not as a political opponent but as a usurper."

That is what the column accuses Romney of. And that's what he is doing.
– January 31, 2012 1:24 PM
Q.
Presidential Election 2012
So I figure it boils down to four states: Nevada, Colorado, Ohio & Florida. The president has three possible scenarios: if he wins Ohio, he wins; if he wins Florida, he wins; if he wins Nevada & Colorado, he wins. The Republican nominee (most likely Romney) has to win all four to win the election. That being the case, I figure the president already has it in the bag. My question is (assuming that Romney is the nominee): do you really believe he has a shot at winning the election? Because I don't see it.

–
January 31, 2012 12:04 PM
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A.
Eugene Robinson :

There are some other states in play, too -- Virginia, North Carolina. I've always said this is going to be a close election. I believe Obama should be favored to win, but it will be no cakewalk.
– January 31, 2012 1:28 PM
Q.
How did Romney get the lead?

Despite Newt's many, many negatives - the main reason - about 4 to 5 times more money for "Romney's" PACs to spend on attack ads. Reverse the money and I'd bet Newt would be ahead, moon base or no.

–
January 31, 2012 1:10 PM
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A.
Eugene Robinson :

It's hard to be confident in that what-if scenario, I think, because Gingrich is capable of political self-immolation at any given moment. But it is true that he has inspired more fervor among conservatives than Romney has, or perhaps ever will. Romney is the establishment's choice, largely because he has the best chance against Obama. The party rank-and-file still haven't fallen in line.
– January 31, 2012 1:33 PM
Q.
Downside for Democrats?
Is there any downside at all for the Democrats to having Romney and Gingrich keep whaling on each other for as long as possible? Could the public become inured to the criticisms of Romney too soon? Also, I've heard it said that having to fight Hillary made Obama a stronger candidate. Could that be happening here as well?

–
January 31, 2012 1:10 PM
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A.
Eugene Robinson :

From the Democrats' point of view, I don't see the downside. There is no way the Romney campaign is happy about the way Gingrich is defining their candidate. And while it's true that a candidate can be made stronger and sharper by a primary fight, it's not clear to me that this is happening with Romney.
– January 31, 2012 1:37 PM
Q.
All the way to the convention
If the Republicans go all the way to the convention without formally declaring a front-runner, won't that be detrimental to their changes of winning the election? I'm thinking specifically of Ted Kennedy and Jimmy Carter in the 1980 election, and that in-fighting giving Ronald Reagan the advantage as a result.

–
January 31, 2012 1:12 PM
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A.
Eugene Robinson :

I've heard people compare this contest to that 1980 campaign. And it didn't work out well for President Carter in the end.
– January 31, 2012 1:39 PM
Q.
Romney v Obama
Eveyrone says that Romney is the best Republican candidate to face Obama but aren't there concerns about voter apathy in the Republican party? Independents might break for Romney if the economy doesn't approve but I think Democrats would be energized to put Obama in for a second term while the right wing might be demoralized because no one who they truly believe is conservative is running.

–
January 31, 2012 1:24 PM
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A.
Eugene Robinson :

What's really changing in the Obama-Romney equation is that the economy is getting better. Polls show brightening attitudes about how the nation and the economy are doing. The shift is not huge but it is measurable, and if things continue to move in that direction, Obama becomes harder to beat.
– January 31, 2012 1:43 PM
Q.
singing contest
Does Romney think that singing "America the Beautiful" makes him more "human" and "relateable"? I think smooth Obama wins that singing contest.

–
January 31, 2012 1:27 PM
Permalink

A.
Eugene Robinson :

One of the odder things about Romney's campaign has been his decision to recite "America the Beautiful" as part of his standard stump speech. Now he has begun actually singing the song. In that category, I'm not sure either Romney or Obama is the equal of Herman Cain.
– January 31, 2012 1:46 PM
Q.
What happens when Santorum drops out?
Newt talks a lot about the "conservative candidates" (aka him plus Santorum) are added up, they win. Assuming Newt is serious about staying in the race through the convention, when Santorum drops out, is it really a sure thing that his support will all flow to Gingrich?

–
January 31, 2012 1:35 PM
Permalink

A.
Eugene Robinson :

No, but I think Gingrich would get most of it. Many conservatives just don't believe Romney shares their views.
– January 31, 2012 1:50 PM
Click here!
Q.
Gender Gap
Polls mostly show Newt Gingrich performing significantly better with men than with women. Do you think this stems from his infidelities? Or his white-hot rhetoric -- something which traditionally plays better with men than with women? Romney sure seems like the "nicer" candidate.

–
January 31, 2012 12:46 PM
Permalink

A.
Eugene Robinson :

Probably a bit of both. There was speculation, actually, that Gingrich's vote among conservative women in South Carolina would fall sharply because of the whole "open marriage" thing, but the drop-off wasn't that big.
– January 31, 2012 2:01 PM
Q.
Orlando -- Heart of the I-4 Corridor
Romney ads 'round the clock here. Some Newt ads, but not nearly as many.

–
January 31, 2012 1:02 PM
Permalink

A.
Eugene Robinson :

Romney's got the dough. He blankets the airwaves.

And that's all for today, folks. My time is up. Thanks for tuning in, and I'll see you again next week.
– January 31, 2012 2:02 PM

The Collective Press (St. Augustine, Florida) 2005 article, "The Stupor Bowl Cometh" (Superbowl was in Jacksonville that year)

2012-01-31T11:24:00.000-08:00

The "Stupor Bowl" Cometh

By Ed Slavin

A friend asked, "who's going to the Super Bowl?" I responded, "a bunch of rich people."

Residents are urged to "spruce up" their homes and businesses in anticipation of Super Bowl XXXIX. You're expected to redecorate and otherwise cater to skybox CEOs for an entire week.

Jetloads of corporate oligarchs are flying in. Actual fans of actual competing teams are a small minority of the stadium audience. Every cadaverous Fortune 500 corporation will be there -- spending what the late Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis called "Other Peoples' Money."

Stupor Bowl tickets make great political or commercial bribes.

Meanwhile, Rupert Murdoch's Fox network charges some $2.4 million to air a thirty second spot (plus production costs).

How many Stupor Bowl tickets, hotel rooms, bar tabs and prostitutes will be paid for by American consumers? How many unindicted corporate criminals will roam our streets?

Ever since football supplanted baseball as national sport, American moral values have been declining. Megacorporate culture venerates "team players and brute force -- Groupthink -- not skill, intelligence or individual achievement. America now treasures violence, overpaying "athletes" to maim one another (many playing injured and later crippled). America's football gladiators play roughly in unsafe conditions (cold, sleet, snow, rain). We venerate an indescribably unsafe workplace as a "spectator sport."

At least football players have a democratic trade union. So should all Americans.

Sadly, uninformed Americans hold up football players (and cheerleaders) as "role models" (not artists, musicians or civil libertarians). American football is a violent, slow, dumb, dull sport based on violence, meanness and bigness. (For a good time, watch Australian Rules Football, which emphasizes skill, speed and agility, not brutality).

America does not invest adequately in libraries and education. Is there any wonder why so many people don't know what's happening?

Our football culture is a great way to divert people from corruption and rot. Imperial Rome offered its citizens "bread and circuses." America offers its citizens football.

Every high school and college in America squanders money on football, many with expensive night games and fields lit at public expense. Why is American education in crisis? Misplaced priorities, with massive spending on football at the junior and senior high school and college level. Baseball pays for its own "farm teams."

All Americans pay for college football (NFL farm teams) and NFL football venues.
Corporate oligarchs exemplify NFL values.

America venerates violence while arms merchants turn America into a permanent warfare state, subsidizing corporate welfare recipients like Lockheed Martin.

Listen to a Pentagon briefing on warfare: you will hear football slang. Listen to warmongers stigmatize dissenters and call them "Monday morning quarterbacks."

Jesuit priest-poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote in 1918 that the world is "smeared, bleared and teared with trade."

Today, we are "smeared, bleared and teared" with football and its conformist "team player" ideology. It's everywhere and destructive of democracy and the health and happiness of humankind.

Corporate "crime in the suites" grows. We face declining real income, preventable workplace deaths and diseases, civil rights violations, gun deaths, Fox News and other media and corporate monopolies, pricefixing, shoddy defective products, dangerous prescription drugs, rapacious advertising industry, job outsourcing, NAFTA, environmental pollution, suburban sprawl, union-busting, whistleblower-persecution, bribery, chicanery, casefixing, election-stealing, propaganda, corporations that keep you on hold, anti-intellectualism, surveillance and other activities --- antisocial behavior "brought to you by" overpaid, unaccountable CEOs.

At the 1773 Boston Tea Party, patriots dressed as Native Americans, dumping tea in Boston Harbor, protesting British imperialism. (A surviving tea chest is proudly housed in a Boston museum display case, hand-made by skilled St. Augustine wood workers).

How should progressives "celebrate" the Stupor Bowl? As a symbol of greed, violence and corruption, promoting meanness, exploitation, and authoritarianism.

Authoritarians hate satire, but real Americans love it. Satire helps inform and entertain.

What do you think? A Stupor Bowl party might include mock "citizens' arrests" of CEOs and Bush Administration officials, with prison striped uniforms, pinstripes, handcuffs and Abu Ghraib style dog collars and leashes. A corporate "Hall of Shame" and.or teach-in might help educate the public about what Corporate America is doing to workers, consumers and our environment.

The whole world is watching -- estimated worldwide TV audience is one billion people.

New York Times Editorial on "Increasingly Sour Taste in Voters' Mouths" From Bigoted Republican Presidential Candidate Wrecking Crew

2012-01-31T11:01:00.000-08:00

January 30, 2012
Don’t Stop the Debates

Senator John McCain spoke for many nervous Republicans on Sunday when he said it’s time to “stop the debates.” They’ve turned into mud-wrestling contests, he said on “Meet the Press” on NBC, and are driving up negative impressions of the party’s presidential candidates.

Mr. McCain, who knows something about unfavorable ratings, is right that the 19 debates so far have left an increasingly sour taste in voters’ mouths. Since the debates began, the popularity gap has grown between the leading Republican candidates and President Obama.

But that’s not simply because the candidates have increased the intensity of their attacks on each other, nor is it curable by cutting back the mud-fighting, as Mr. McCain suggests. It’s also because voters have been exposed to the broken windows of the Republican idea factory. The value of debates is to put the candidates on stage to air their ideas. If voters find them dishonest and divisive, the Republicans are getting the wrong message if they think all they have to do to fix that is to stop talking so much.

Consider some of the “bold ideas” the country learned about in just the last two debates in Florida, leading up to Tuesday’s primary there.

Newt Gingrich wants to build a lunar colony on the moon in just eight years, and he seems to believe that the private sector can be induced to pay for it. He wants to convene a “gold commission” to get the country back to hard money, which would shackle the economy to a single commodity. He wants to end multilingual ballots (disenfranchising millions), promote an uprising in Cuba and end the capital gains tax, which would allow millionaires to pay less of their income to the government than the minimum they pay now.

Mitt Romney promised to get millions of illegal immigrants to “self-deport,” apparently by making their lives miserable. He would veto the Dream Act, which would provide a path to citizenship for immigrant college students and military service members. He would refuse to extend any government help to struggling homeowners, while repealing the Dodd-Frank law that finally regulated the banking practices that led to the housing crisis.

The debates that Mr. McCain so deplores also gave voters a taste of the incompetent candidacies of Herman Cain, Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann, helping to put an end to them. They have properly marginalized Ron Paul and his cranky libertarianism.

And they have given Rick Santorum repeated opportunities to point out that Mr. Romney’s bellicose opposition to “Obamacare” is an almost comical contradiction to his support for the same idea in Massachusetts when he was governor there. (Mr. Santorum’s strong debate performances haven’t given him much recent traction in the primaries, though.)

Most of all, the debates have shown the complete lack of interest by all the Republican candidates in the issues of economic fairness. While the candidates argue over their investments and their complex tax returns and who can cut taxes for the rich the most, the contrast to Mr. Obama’s newfound voice on shared responsibility could not be more clear.

The long series of debates are an open window onto the failed policies and dubious values of the Republican Party. No wonder some people want to close it.

Happy Turkey Day -- Can You Believe Anyone Would Vote for One of These Four Turkeys? (Republican Primary Day in Florida)

2012-01-31T09:33:00.001-08:00

Post number 5401

2012-01-31T09:29:00.000-08:00

This blog began nearly six years ago, in the year 2006, after our City of St. Augustine illegally dumped solid waste in our Old City Reservoir. This post marks the 5401st post since April 2006.

Our erstwhile City Manager retired in 2009.

New Commissioners, with independence and vision, have been elected.

A new City Manager, with integrity and sensitivity, is now on the job.

As Ronald Reagan said, "You ain't seen nothin' yet."

We're proud to live in St. Augustine, where citizen concerns are being heard and heeded.

Our City is now worthy of pride.

Our City is standing up to Rep. WILLIAM L. PROCTOR and all his works and pomps -- his eminent domain bill for Florida School for the Deaf and Blind is a stench in the nostrils of the Nation.

Good work!

FOLIO WEEKLY Editor Anne Schindler re: Lawlessness -- Rep. WM. PROCTOR's Conflict of Interest --- FSDB Eminent Domain Bill

2012-01-30T11:03:00.000-08:00

Blind Spot

Rep. Bill Proctor’s eminent domain bill offers a legislative reward for bad behavior.

Written by: Anne Schindler

Published January 24, 2012

The original three buildings of the Florida School for the Deaf & the Blind were indistinguishable from single-family homes — handsome, Victorian structures set behind a low picket fence on San Marco Avenue in St. Augustine. A photograph from the era shows students seated on the wide front porches and leaning over the gate, as horse drawn carriages and pedestrians stroll by (right).

In the intervening years, the school has evolved — to put it mildly. It has grown from five to almost 80 acres and from a few dozen to roughly 700 students. In that time, the school has not only erased its once-domestic footprint, it has decimated acres of single-family homes and destroyed large swaths of the surrounding historic neighborhood. In recent years, school administrators have bought and demolished two city streets of charming, well-built bungalows, in defiance of the wishes of nearby residents, their own original master plan and even, on occasion, city law.

In recent weeks, the city and the school have been in mediation, trying to settle on an appropriate response to school’s brazen disregard of city rules on matters such as fence height and the preservation of historic structures. But even as negotiations were ongoing, the school’s chief benefactor — longtime FSDB Board member and state Rep. Bill Proctor (R-St. Augustine) — was working to exempt the school from following any rules at all. House Bill 1139, introduced by Proctor in December, would shield FSDB from having to observe city zoning codes and give the school the radical power of eminent domain.

The measure would allow the school to accomplish one thing immediately — to build the block-long dormitory that it’s been wanting for years. The plan has been stymied in part by a need to rezone the property to allow for a dorm –– something residents oppose, and the city has previously refused — and in part by the stubborn reluctance of one resident who refused to sell out (James Register, who has lived there since the 1960s, and who owns the only home left standing on the once-residential block). Both obstacles would be conveniently removed.

In fairness, the school has little other room to expand. It already acquired the former (filled) wetlands in the 1950s (before pesky “environmental laws” prohibited such things), so the only space left for it to grow is into surrounding neighborhoods. But the question of expansion raises a legitimate question of need: By exactly how much is the school growing? According to St. Augustine City Commissioner Leanna Freeman, the student population is trending in the opposite direction, down 10 percent over the past five to seven years.

For some, the declining population suggests that the school’s expansion push is unnecessary. But it’s not just a question of need. It’s a matter of principle. In rejecting the school’s previous request to rezone the Alfred/Genoply block for the dorm, city Planning and Zoning Board member Jerry Dixon noted “the [adjacent] property was acquired sort of underhandedly” — without informing residents of expansion plans, and without regard for the inch-thick Facilities Master Plan the school drafted at the request of the governor in the early ’80s. The school simply began buying up homes.

Without the power of eminent domain, which allows a government to take property by fiat and reimburse according to appraised value, the school used old-fashioned squeeze tactics, targeting willing sellers first, then pressuring reluctant residents to sell as the community eroded. As resident Bo Sterk told the St. Augustine Record in 2001, “Nobody knows what is going on. … People are just caving.”

The money used to acquire the homes, it’s worth pointing out, were taxpayer dollars — roughly $1.9 million — for a project that was either poorly defined or deliberately concealed. (The school’s own board minutes from March 2002 show that: “Purchase of the land was approved with the intention of use to be decided at a later date.”) Whether that money was well spent remains in question. Absent a rezoning, the school cannot use much of the land it purchased. And as a scathing 2003 audit by the state found, in at least 11 cases, the school had already drawn up contracts to buy property before it conducted the required appraisals. As audit supervisor Joe Williams noted at the time, “Essentially, the [FSDB] president believes the school is free to manage its own affairs … without regard to any statutory or rule provisions. We respectfully disagree.”

The fact that Proctor wants to free the school from rules it barely observes already is a slap in the face to the surrounding community — but not a big surprise. Proctor will be protected from public backlash by the fact that he’s term-limited, but in truth, he’s never shown much concern for what his constituents think. He’s never had to face a real challenge for his seat, never paused in his support of bills like SB 6 that his constituents opposed and has blithely chaired the House Education Committee while educating all his children (and now grandchildren) in private schools. Proctor’s disconnect from the people of his district has reached its apex with the FSDB proposal — a bill that would put an equally arrogant institution at a similar remove.

It’s a bad piece of legislation, and it sends an even worse message: Lawlessness and incivility are rewarded, and the rights of institutions take precedence over those of actual people. The students of FSDB deserve better role models.

Anne Schindler

themail@folioweekly.com

DOJ Press Release: Lydia Cladek Convicted -- Cladek's $100,000,000 Fraud Showed "Personal Greed at Its Highest Level"

2012-01-30T10:58:00.000-08:00

Jury Finds St. Augustine Beach Woman Guilty of Conspiracy, Mail Fraud, and Wire Fraud
U.S. Attorney’s Office January 27, 2012

Middle District of Florida (904) 301-6300

JACKSONVILLE, FL—U.S. Attorney Robert E. O’Neill announces that a federal jury yesterday found Lydia Cladek (67, St. Augustine Beach) guilty of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, mail fraud, and wire fraud. Cladek was charged in a 14-count indictment on November 19, 2010. She was found guilty on all charges and faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in federal prison for each of the fourteen counts. Cladek’s sentencing hearing will be scheduled for a future date.

According to testimony and evidence presented at trial, Cladek offered investors the opportunity to “loan” money to Lydia Cladek, Inc. in exchange for a promissory note from the corporation. The notes were secured by car notes that Lydia Cladek, Inc. had purchased in the past. Cladek represented that the assigned notes were genuine and valid, had never been assigned before, and would not be assigned in the future. She also represented that she would use the funds that were loaned by the investors to purchase new car notes. All of these representations were false.

In some cases, the car notes attached as collateral to investor notes had previously been assigned to four or five investors in the past. In many cases, the car notes were then assigned to new victim investors, sometimes in as little as a week.

In addition to making false representations about the quality of the investors’ collateral, evidence also showed that Cladek used new investor funds to pay interest to old investors and to fund her lavish lifestyle. By as early as 2003, Lydia Cladek, Inc. did not have sufficient car notes on hand to provide promised collateral to all investors. By 2005, Cladek had outstanding investor notes of approximately $58 million, but only had car notes on hand for approximately $38 million. By March 31, 2010, the date on which the FBI served a search warrant on Lydia Cladek, Inc., the existing performing car notes owned by Cladek had dwindled to just under $4 million, while the outstanding loans to investors exceeded $90 million.

Cladek used money given to her from investors to maintain lavish real estate holdings, including three vacation homes in Captiva and Sanibel, Florida as well as a luxurious residence in St. Augustine Beach. Cladek maintained her own household “manager” who testified that she purchased much of the custom furnishings and accessories in the home for Lydia Cladek, including a set of sheets costing $2,000.

In order to invest, potential investors had to be personal friends of Cladek or be referred by an existing investor. Cladek obtained many of her investors from her church and other social organizations.

“This case represents personal greed at the highest level,” said U.S. Attorney Robert O’Neill. “We will continue to prosecute those who seek to deprive people of their hard-earned money. The conviction of Lydia Cladek should be a warning to those seeking to take advantage of a trusted business-client relationship, by engaging in fraudulent practices. And it should bring a greater awareness to those seeking to invest their dollars.”

“We are pleased with the jury’s verdict, and hope that Ms. Cladek’s victims can take some comfort in the fact that she has been brought to justice,” stated James Casey, Special Agent in Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation

This case was investigated by the FBI. It is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Jay Taylor and Mac Heavener.

Zany Republican Wrecking Crew Will Soon Leave Florida in its Wake

2012-01-30T06:51:00.000-08:00

The Florida Republican Primary is nearly over. Currently cruising radical rightist primary votes in Florida are a rancid menagerie of three mediocrities – the banksters' pals, false-flag, faux “family values” hucksters (Romney, Gingrich, Santorum).
The Republican Primary is tomorrow.
The stiff Quarter-Billionaire and the other fakers will soon take off in their private jets, cruising more hicks and rubes to deceive, hoping to protect the privileged from any hint of regulation or equal treatment.
For the moment, we in Florida are blessed to watch the blizzard of negative TV ads, with each nasty, other-directed dull Republican stating a part of the truth about their fellow Republican.
In contrast to the Republican wrecking crew are the authentic, real people who make our town and Nation a better place – people like my friend Robin Nadeau, who died January 6th.
People like Robin Nadeau practice real family values, not faux family values, working to help better their town, county, state and Nation.
We are the 99% and there are more of us than there are of the 1% and their zany defenders, whose surnames sound as dull and somber as they are (Romney, Gingrich and Santorum).

Excellent St. Augustine Record Editorial Parts Ways with Rep. WM. PROCTOR, Opposes FSDB Eminent Domain Legislation, HB 1037

2012-01-30T06:08:00.000-08:00

Our view: Don't give FSDB eminent domain
Posted: January 29, 2012 - 12:34am

Officials of The Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind want the Florida Legislature to give the school the same powers of eminent domain other public education institutions have. They say they don’t have any plans to use it now but would like it, just in case for the future. And they say it would save public dollars on land costs.

But they want it without local government oversight and that’s where we part ways with the school, the bill and state Rep. Bill Proctor.

In his last term in the Florida House of Representatives, Proctor is pushing House Bill 1037 which would give the school eminent domain. Proctor is not the sponsor of the bill but he might as well be. The bill’s sponsor is Rep. Doug Broxson of Gulf Breeze.

Proctor is the political face of FSDB and has been for more than two decades, including his 18 years on the board of trustees, 12 of them as chairman. There’s little doubt in our mind that the bill is being pushed as a “thank you gesture” from his colleagues. Proctor would disagree with us because he said to the Record Editorial Board recently that the bill is needed to give FSDB what other public educational entities already have — the power to take private property, if necessary, for the institution’s use and at reasonable costs. We agree those powers are allowed for public schools, colleges and universities. But, along with the power in the law, there are also requirements that those entities work with local governments on their expansion and master plans.

Until Wednesday, HB 1037 included those same kinds of requirements. But Wednesday night, during the House Community & Military Affairs committee, those requirements to cooperate were deleted from the bill. And the bill analysis at myfloridahouse.com said it passed without objection.

The bill must face other committees before the full House votes. But, the new version is so badly gutted of checks and balances that we have to question what the House wants the bill to be? It appears the only goal is to allow the school unregulated powers of eminent domain. We do not believe this should occur. We fully expect that if this bill passes the House and Senate that FSDB will have greater powers than any other public school or college or university over eminent domain.

This bill is about the future. While FSDB has said it has no expansion plans now, a future board of trustees and administration could change that. With the wrong people in power, and eminent domain authority without local government oversight, we could see whole neighborhoods disappear.

The Florida Legislature should let this bill die. Should it pass, we hope Gov. Rick Scott has the political will to veto it.

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watchinourbucks
Don't give FSDB eminent domain power
By watchinourbucks | 01/29/12 - 01:14 pm

If you've been here long enough, you'll remember the fiasco of our Airport Authority being legislated eminent domain. The 80-85
families in Araquay and Jackson Park, some third generation homeowners were "displaced" by pressure from the airport authority.
Approximately 304-309 parcels of land CURRENTLY are owned by the Airport Authority; patch-work parcels on both sides of U.S. 1, OFF the tax rolls, for expansion. Do ya' think that the same grasping attitude might be budding at FSDB ?

New, tax subsidized hangars now stand where these 'just plain folks'
homes once stood. Our previous av valorem taxes paid to the airport, helped squeeze out those homeowners not wanting to sell.

If eminent domain is granted to FSDB, essentially ANY property
owned by residents can be "needed" by FSDB for some 'worthwhile'
purpose. Our / your taxes will pay for it; their attorney ( paid by your taxes) will fight you for ownership of YOUR home. YOU will have to retain an attorney, if you want to keep YOUR home ( possibly to pass on to your heirs).

It was interesting how FAST a fence was constructed along the
City / FSDB property line: perhaps a reader might want to do a
Freedom of Information request of Mr. Hutto and FSDB Board Members' emails / correspondence, to see if the decision to construct the fence was done in the sunshine. Was
the formality of a bid to several vendors done ?

I plan to send copies of the " Our View," and St. Augustine Commissioner Bill Leary's guest column to all of our Florida
Legislators, as well as Governor Scott.

It might be interesting to obtain, under the Freedom of Information
Act, copies of emails / letter correspondence from and to the bill's
sponsor, Representative Doug Broxson and Representative Bill
Proctor, for the past 10 months or so.

Why would Representative Doug Broxson, from Gulf Breeze, Fl.
sponsor House Bill 1037, for Representative Proctor ?

Mr. Proctor has had some positive for St. Augustine during his terms. Will this apparent eminent domain "thank you gesture" be a stain on his and Representative Broxson's political career ?

Coach Paterno won hundreds of games during his coaching years.
Most people will remember his inaction re. Coach Sandusky's conduct; a major 'forever smear' on all of Jo-Pa's successes.

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nautico
Last bad acts
By nautico | 01/30/12 - 07:37 am

Watcchinourbucks, your mention of Paterno and Sandusky reminded me of a line from the TV show "Blue Bloods" in which Tom Selleck's police commissioner character says

"Sometimes we judge ourselves by our good intentions, but we are judged by our last worst act."

The reactions to Gov Haley Barbour's pardons come to mind, as well. Like those pardons, Rep. Proctor's bill smacks of a final out-the-door gift to his FSDB constituency.

St. Augustine Record: Commissioner William Leary Blasts Oppressive, String-Pulling Puppeteer Rep. WILLIAM PROCTOR

2012-01-30T06:05:00.001-08:00

Guest column: City and FSDB must work out problems locally not by legislative fiat
Posted: January 29, 2012 - 12:35am
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By Bill Leary
St. Augustine City Commissioner

At Friday’s emergency meeting of the Board of Trustees of The Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind (FSDB), at which angry and fearful neighbors were gratefully allowed to speak their minds, I was struck by how much it seems we are all puppets dancing to the strings of Bill Proctor.

Act One was 10 years ago when the school, under his leadership, purchased several residences in the block bordered by Genopoly and Alfred streets for future use. Proctor concluded the school paid too much and vowed to run for the Florida Legislature to give FSDB eminent domain powers so it would never have to over-pay again.

Act Two began last spring involving the Collins House, a large carriage house on a residential lot owned by FSDB used to house students. After two years of disuse, FSDB decided to renovate rather than demolish the structure and expand its use and size beyond that allowed under city single-family residential zoning. Nearly all neighbors were pleased the building was being saved, but many objected to the code violations. Over their and the city’s objection, FSDB nonetheless implemented its restoration plan and has moved students back into the building.

Into this cauldron of discord and mistrust Proctor thrust legislation to (1) resolve the Collins zoning issues in favor of the school by legislative fiat; (2) replace the requirement that the school cooperate with the city in its expansion with a requirement that the city serve FSDB’s interests even if that means ignoring the will of its citizens; and (3) give the appointed board of trustees the power to take private property by eminent domain even if over the objections of the owners or their elected officials.

Some have said that Proctor has chosen in his last year in office to represent FSDB rather than St. Augustine. I believe that in his personal quest to right a perceived affront a decade ago, Proctor now represents the best interests of neither. Clearly his quest is at odds with the City of St. Augustine and its residents. But in the long run, it does not further the interests of the school. Long after Proctor stops pulling the strings, FSDB, the city and its residents will have a relationship. Surely the school’s board does not wish it to continue as it is. I understand the board’s priority to protect and meet the needs of the students and their families. We all honor them for what they do.

Likewise, I respect Proctor’s devotion to FSDB, but on this matter, we clearly disagree. He says it’s just fair to give the school eminent domain because the other public schools have it. But that is casuistry. Even if those school systems did not, I believe he would argue FSDB should because it is unique. The simple fact is that one must view his quest not as filling in the last piece of some educational governance puzzle, but as pouring oil onto a raging fire. His legislation will ensure that for many years to come, the relationship between the school and its neighbors and the city will remain needlessly cold.

It will be hard to stop Proctor’s personal quest because through patience and political cunning he is positioned to effect trades with other legislators to achieve his goal. But it a misuse of the Legislature to keep us here locally from working this out ourselves. There is a saying that “things work out best for those who make the best of the way things work out.” If he will allow it, FSDB and we will work this out. For our future, we simply must.

■

Bill Leary was elected to the St. Augustine City Commission for a four-year term in 2010. He previously served on the city’s Planning and Zoning Board.

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NEFLNative
Bill Leary
By NEFLNative | 01/29/12 - 12:05 pm

The best thing the city residents ever did was elect Bill Leary to the City Commission! Excellent editorial, Commissioner Leary!

NEFLNative

Florida Center for Investigative Reporting re: Senator Thrasher's Bill That Would Ban State College Professors from Serving in State Legislature

2012-01-27T13:18:00.000-08:00

Blog, Government, Politics
Florida Legislature: College Professors Need Not Apply

Published on January 25, 2012. Tags: Brevard Community College, Conflict Of Interest, Dennis Jones, Florida College System, Florida Senate, John Thrasher, Mike Haridopolos, Northwest Florida State College, Ralph De La Cruz, Ray Sansom, SB 1560, St. Petersburg College, Subcommittee On Ethics And Elections

Sen. John Thrasher has proposed a bill that would prohibit college professors from serving in the state legislature. (Photo: screen capture from Senate video.)

By Ralph De La Cruz
Florida Center for Investigative Reporting

Triangulate this story and you’ll find it falls somewhere between laughable, maddening and ironic: A bill moving forward in the Florida Senate would ban state college and university employees, such as professors, from serving in the state legislature.

Cue up the “Yeah, no need to taint the Capitol gene pool with some smart people” joke.

Although the proposal seems far from certain (SB 1560 only passed the Senate Rules Subcommittee on Ethics and Elections by a 7-6 vote on Monday), it has nevertheless passed its first legislative obstacle.

The bill, authored by Sen. John Thrasher, is supposed to prevent conflicts of interest by folks from state colleges and universities. But banning them from serving in the legislature doesn’t make sense. Because, almost by definition, every person in the state has the potential for a conflict of interest. That’s true not just for the state legislature, but every county commission, town council and water district seat.

It’s how our citizen government works. We pick people who live and work in our communities and ask them to manage the affairs of those towns and counties and the state. That’s why every governing body already has conflict-of-interest rules that forbid voting on a bill or ordinance from which you could benefit.

And if lawmakers are so concerned about conflicts of interest, why single out state college and university employees? Spend a little time going through the current Florida Senate roster and you’ll find that more than a quarter of the 40-person Florida Senate (12 lawmakers) identify themselves as lawyers or paralegals (one senator). And these are people who — wait for it — make laws. Talk about a conflict of interest. Or are they simply people with expertise and familiarity in that area? Thrasher, by the way, is on that list.

Another six see themselves as professional politicians. Four are farmers or ranchers. Another four are from the health care industry, and four more in education. Two are from real estate, two contractors, two former sheriffs, two bankers.

Which of those industries doesn’t have a vested interest in state laws?

If Thrasher’s bill keeps moving forward, it should be interesting to see how it will be received by Sen. Dennis Jones, a vice president with St. Petersburg College. Not to speak of Senate President Mike Haridopolos, who lists his occupation as a professor at Brevard Community College (remember the $152,000 he got for a 175-page double-spaced book manuscript on Florida politics?).

The other major problem with Thrasher’s bill is that it’s another law for a problem that doesn’t exist (remember the bill that would ban Sharia law and the other bill to end the ban on dwarf-tossing?). How many times has there been a serious problem with folks from state colleges and universities taking over government?

Aside from Haridopolos’ book deal, the most obvious example is the case of former state House Speaker Ray Sansom, who was hired by Northwest Florida State College after he left the legislature, and subsequently used his political power and influence to the advantage of the college, himself and a developer.

Sansom was a lot of things — depending on your view: a hired gun, a politician/lobbyist, a scalawag — but no one ever seriously identified him as a professor.

And if this is really about addressing the Sansom and Haridopolos embarrassments, wouldn’t it make more sense to propose a bill that would ban politicians from becoming college professors, rather than the other way around?

Thrasher’s bill just doesn’t make sense. Yet seven senators — supposedly our most senior, respected lawmakers — voted for it and moved it past the first legislative hurdle.

And chew on this: SB 1560 has already gotten further than a bill that would have allowed Florida voters to recall state leaders.

* * *

I won’t be updating you on the fate of SB 1560. Today’s item will be my last for the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting. I’m leaving behind 28 years in journalism to write books and movies. I look forward to the opportunity to pursue that lifelong dream, but will seriously miss writing this blog and interacting with readers.

Every writer knows (or should know) that, by themselves, words are meaningless. It’s only when they’re read that they acquire any power. Thanks for giving some of mine a little juice.

I will continue to be an avid reader and fan of FCIR. If any of you feel a need to reach me, send me a line at elvientogrande@gmail.com.

Good luck, all.

St. Augustine Record Quotes Former Rep. Doug Wiles Opposing Conflicted Rep. Proctor's Eminent Domain Bill for FSDB

2012-01-27T07:11:00.003-08:00

The Florida School for the Deaf and Blind Campus has mushroomed from five acres to more than 75 acres. It demands eminent domain despite declining enrollments. Two National Register of Historic Places neighborhoods are in danger -- Fullerwood and Nelmar Terrace. State Representative William L. Proctor is behind the scheme.

Wiles says eminent domain for FSDB would have long-term impact
Former legislator differs with Proctor on granting school eminent domain
Posted: January 27, 2012 - 12:33am
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By PETER GUINTA
peter.guinta@staugustine.com

When former state Rep. Doug Wiles, D-St. Augustine, wrote House Bill 1059 in 2004, he intended that The Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind be treated as a school district or university — adding that it should cooperate with city zoning laws.

But the Senate removed the obligation to cooperate from the final bill.

Now, with House Bill 1037 submitted by state Rep. Bill Proctor, R-St. Augustine, any neighborhood protection in Wiles’ bill would be gone, and FSDB would have the power of eminent domain.

Proctor worked closely with the city when he served as president of Flagler College, Wiles said.

“When things got a little rough, they worked it out,” he said. “Both sides can grow and expand when you work together. (FSDB President) Danny Hutto has tried his best to keep good neighborhood relations. I don’t think they need eminent domain, but if you have to have it, there should be part of the law that says you’ve got to work together.”

Residents living in the historic neighborhoods of Nelmar Terrace and Fullerwood are alarmed.

FSDB is bounded on the west by San Marco Avenue and on the east by the Intracoastal Waterway. Unless it decides to expand across San Marco, it can only grow north toward Fullerwood and south toward Nelmar Terrace.

Wiles’ bill said educational institutions “may have an adverse impact on the public facilities (and) services of host governments,” so its long-range plans must contain “elements of intergovernmental coordination that addresses compatibility with the surrounding community.”

He served from 1996 to 2004.

On Thursday, he said giving FSDB eminent domain “may not have an immediate impact but would certainly have a long-term impact. We can’t even imagine what that impact will be. Eminent domain powers given to a state agency may apply anywhere, even in the county.”

Today, Fullerwood and Nelmar residents say they will attempt to convince FSDB’s seven-member Board of Trustees to end their attempts to obtain eminent domain. A hearing set for 9:30 a.m. on campus is to discuss security issues relating to the historic Collins House on Nelmar Avenue, now a girls dormitory.

Wiles said H.B. 1037 would eliminate the sense of cooperation that he specifically wrote into his 2004 bill.

There’s sometimes a dramatic escalation in land cost when a state institution seeks to buy private property, so eminent domain — used for example by North Florida Regional Airport to acquire the Araquay Park properties — can be necessary for the public good, he said.

But residents note that FSDB’s enrollment is declining and ask, “Why do they want this power?”

Homeowners have the power to sue under 1995’s Bert J. Harris Property Protection Act, which says property owners could be due compensation if a government takes their property without adequate compensation.

Wiles said, “The school bought (the Collins House) knowing they couldn’t use it. Why wouldn’t they want to work more effectively with the political entity that surrounds it?”

■

FSDB to hold emergency meeting over securing alleyway by Collins House

The Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind trustees are to hold an emergency meeting today to figure out how to make a campus alley safer for students.

FSDB spokeswoman Miki Gilloon said there have been some “increased incidents” since the holidays in the alleyway on the Collins House property on Nelmar Street. The alleyway is also adjacent to the president’s house at 27 Milton Street, she stated.

“Basically this meeting is to look at ways in securing the alleyway, and this is a decision that’s going to be made by the board of trustees,” Gilloon said.

The meeting is open to the public and to be conducted at 9:30 a.m. in Moore Hall, 207 N. San Marco Ave., Room 126.

Residents may also participate by conference call by dialing 866-503-4605.

When prompted, enter code number 9048272614. Then, state your name and press the # key.

Satire On Rep. Proctor's Eminent Domain Bill -- A Parody of "Baby Baby Where did our Love Go" by the Supremes

2012-01-27T07:11:00.001-08:00

Proctor, Proctor

Bill, don't BS me
Ooh, please don't BS me
We know you’re all wrong

We got this yearning, burning
Yearning feelin' inside us
Ooh, deep inside us
And it makes us all mad

You came into our hood, Proctor Proctor
So selfishly
With HB 1037
Stinkin' like horse pee

Now we won’t surrender
Vehemently
You’ll wanna reprieve
Ooh, you’ll wanna reprieve

Ooh, Proctor, Proctor
Where will our house go?
Ooh, don't you hear me?
Don't you see me no more?
Ooh Proctor

Interlude

Proctor, Proctor
Where will our House go?
in Nelmar Terrace
and Fullerwood next door?

We got this yearning, burning
Yearning feelin' inside us
Ooh, deep inside us
And it’s our sense of place

Before you were elected
We had HB 1059
But now you forgot that
We can kiss your behind

Proctor Proctor, ooh Proctor

Proctor, Proctor don't BS me
Ooh, please don't BS me
for FSDB

Proctor, Proctor
Where will our house go?

The Florida School for the Deaf and Blind Campus has mushroomed from five acres to more than 75 acres. It demands eminent domain despite declining enrollments. Two National Register of Historic Places neighborhoods are in danger -- Fullerwood and Nelmar Terrace. State Representative William L. Proctor is behind the scheme. Proctor needs to appear before our City of St. Augustine City Commission and answer questions under oath, instead of hiding in Tallahassee. What do you reckon?

New York Times column re: Gingrich's ethnocentric Ph.D. thesis supporting Belgian colonialism

2012-01-26T16:18:00.001-08:00

December 4, 2011
What Gingrich Didn’t Learn in Congo
By ADAM HOCHSCHILD

San Francisco

NEWT GINGRICH seldom misses a chance to note that he is a historian. He lards his speeches with references to obscure events in the American past, talks about his time teaching at West Georgia College (not one of those effete Ivies), and has declared that the more than $1.6 million in fees he earned from Freddie Mac was for his work not, heaven forbid, as a lobbyist, but as a historian. And last year he was in the news for saying President Obama exhibited “Kenyan, anticolonial behavior.”

Mr. Gingrich would be our first president with a Ph.D. since Woodrow Wilson. Does his work as a historian tell us anything about him? Or, for that matter, anything about why, despite certain events in 1776, he considers “anticolonial” an epithet? To address these questions, a good place to start is his 1971 Tulane doctoral dissertation: “Belgian Education Policy in the Congo 1945-1960.”

A curious document it is — but not in ways that Mr. Gingrich’s enemies might hope for, since the dissertation is not filled with racism or drum-beating for colonialism’s glories. At the start he asks, “Did the colonial powers perform a painful but positive function in disrupting traditional society and so paving the way for more rapid modernization? Even if they did, was the price of colonial exploitation too high?” Good questions, but he never answers them. Instead, he surveys his subject in a highly pedantic way, dutifully covering rural and urban schools, church and state schools, white and black schools, Protestant and Catholic schools, and education for men and for women. Footnotes, statistics and quotes from eminent authorities abound. The writer who emerges from the text is not the fire-breathing, slash-and-burn partisan attacker Mr. Gingrich’s critics portrayed from his time as House speaker, nor the profound, big-picture thinker Mr. Gingrich the candidate presents himself as. It’s the desk-bound policy wonk.

Part of the wonkery is the absence of any human detail. What did a colonial-era Congolese school look like? What was in the textbooks? How did the teachers treat their students? The reader never learns because Mr. Gingrich never went there — although he did go to Belgium. Perhaps he couldn’t afford a trip to Africa. He cites interviews with one American and seven Belgians — but not a single Congolese, though there were hundreds living in Europe and the United States he could have talked to.

Instead, the future legislator was interested in how educational policy in the Congo reflected tensions in Belgian political life — between Catholics and secularists, and between the French and Flemish halves of the country. Absent Congolese voices and lives, the dissertation is as dry as a stale biscuit.

Despite these limitations, however, Mr. Gingrich is clear-eyed about colonialism. “Belgium ran the Congo as a profitable business,” he writes. “This goal could be achieved only with a passive native population.” He notes that the various “civilizing” efforts the Belgians were so proud of “were commercially motivated. For example, the natives received medical care because it improved their capabilities as a work force. They received enough education to be effective workmen.”

He refers to the “paternalistic” policies of a mining company and the colonial government and to the channeling of blacks into vocational and technical training as “ ‘Uncle Tom’-ish,” though “advanced” for its time. Secondary education for girls was “appalling”; for boys, “also pretty dismal.” School financing was “woefully inadequate” and it was “pathetically unjust” that spending per pupil on the children of white settlers was nearly 10 times what it was for Congolese. He scoffs at Belgian pride in setting up two universities during the final years of colonial rule, pointing out that the students were overwhelmingly white.

Beyond education, Mr. Gingrich has a shrewd politician’s sense of how the colonial system worked. Power was held by a “triumvirate”: an all-white senior civil service, a powerful cartel of corporations and the Catholic Church. The first wanted power, the second profits, the third converts. Could this astute description reflect a hitherto unknown radical phase in Newt’s youth?

Alas, no: his beef is not that there might be anything immoral about one country’s owning and exploiting another, but that the Belgians didn’t create a class of Congolese who could keep the economy functioning efficiently — for whose profit, he never asks. “The Belgians get very low marks for their efforts to develop a political elite and much of the country’s post-independence chaos is due to this Belgian failure.”

Hmmm. If you think this sounds too anticolonial, better alert Fox News. But the bigger question is: does this thesis show an original, creative historian at work? This it does not.

Woodrow Wilson’s Ph.D. dissertation boldly asserted that the founding fathers had gotten many things wrong, and advocated for this country something like the British parliamentary system. Soon published as a book, it was argued over for decades, and even scholars who disagreed with Wilson respected him, and his openness to changing his ideas. Mr. Gingrich may succeed in being elected president, but it is hard to imagine him, like Wilson after he left the White House, being elected president of the American Historical Association.

Adam Hochschild is the author of “King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa.”

Click Here to read Ph.D. Dissertation of NEWTON LEROY GINGRICH --- What do you reckon?

2012-01-26T08:25:00.000-08:00

How many sources are from Africa? How much solicitude can one have for a brutal European despotism? Ask NEWTON LEROY GINGRICH at tonight's Republican presidential debate in Jacksonville, FL.

St. Augustiine Record: City: Protect historical artifacts --- outrage over TV reality show sparked commission action

2012-01-25T15:21:00.002-08:00

Posted: January 24, 2012 - 9:55pm
By PETER GUINTA
peter.guinta@staugustine.com

Outrage over TV reality show sparked commission action

Desiring to protect the city’s historic resources, St. Augustine City Commission this week passed a resolution reminding its residents that local archeological artifacts require protection from exploitation.

Commissioner Nancy Sikes-Kline became alarmed after a Los Angeles film company recently requested to film a reality show of city residents digging artifacts from their yards and talking about them on camera.

That project was never developed, though just weeks before, a local resident armed with an expensive metal detector boasted about finding “secret” sites and shipwrecks where he locates and removes thousands of artifacts, including gold and silver from the 16th century.

“It was a double-whammy,” Sikes-Kline said Tuesday. “So it was important to get our message out.”

She also heard that the film company planned digging on the site where Seminole Chief Osceola was captured.

In a prepared statement released Tuesday morning by the city, Sikes-Kline said, “We can all be the best stewards of our property and be sure that when it’s excavated it is not done wilfully but with professional oversight.”

Both those cases sparked an angry outcry from residents and protests from archeologists who said removal of historical artifacts from their locations removes any chance of determining their age and much of the historic value they may hold.

Artifact restoration expert John Powell of St. Augustine said Tuesday that the city’s “archeological integrity” must be maintained.

“St. Augustine has already lost innumerable archeological resources to construction and development,” he said. “Any information we can save about the city’s past we should save. (The city’s) archeological ordinance mandates that any major disruption of soil must be excavated by the city. It’s the only thing that stands between archeological information and the total destruction of those resources.”

Powell praised City Archeologist Carl Halbirt and renowned University of Florida archeologist Kathleen Deagan as world-class “treasures” who have influenced and educated thousands of local residents with their work.

Halbirt said that, by having the archeological ordinance, 600 city properties have been excavated.

“Without the ordinance and investigation, this information would have been permanently lost,” he said. “We’re helping to preserve St. Augustine’s heritage through documentation.”

Sikes-Kline admitted that the new resolution has no enforcement teeth but said it serves to remind residents they should recognize the importance of preserving the archeological significance of what they find on their land.

This can be done by contacting the city prior to any excavation, she said.

There is no telling what Halbirt will find.

For example, while excavating a wooded lot off Magnolia Street for a proposed house construction, he found post holes that led to the conclusion that this site once held a prehistoric Native American occupation that dates prior to Don Pedro Menendez.

Also on that site he found more post holes and archeological items that post-date the 1565 Menendez encampment.

Sikes-Kline said that public property in the county and city is already protected.

“But private property is private property. We can’t tell people what they can or cannot do on their property,” she said. “We just want them to call before digging. This (resolution) is an opportunity to educate people.”

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mullb@slhn.org
About Time
By mullb@slhn.org | 01/25/12 - 07:32 am

FINALLY!!!!!
Finally the city did something to protect itself an its history. I'd like to thank the people responsibile for this one.History be it good or bad is ir replacable once its dug up/ plowed over /built on, or whatever method of destroying it happens.St.Sugistine can preserve its history as well as enlighten vistors who come there for its history amongst other things.Job well done an hopefully people will follow thru. As far as the gentleman who is "secretly" taking treasures an history away from others as they say every dog has its day an time will tell. bdm

B.D.Mull

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Soldado
Speaking of looters...
By Soldado | 01/25/12 - 08:35 am

...whatever happened with the entirely justifiable outcry generated a week or so by the Record's spotlight on them and Dr. Deagan's entirely correct commentary? Is *our* local/state/national heritage still being "expertly restored" for private profit, resulting in the destruction of St. Augustine's irreplaceable archaeological sites and artifacts?

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Alaric
If the city managed our
By Alaric | 01/25/12 - 09:11 am

If the city managed our resources better the Spanish quarter wouldn't be closing. There is no real danger of private archeologists. The city could benefit from more exposure. It seems that completely rejecting outside and private archologists indicates that the city wants to keep evrything to itself. The city should try and work with them and help maintain the integrity of their work rather than flat out rejecting them.

J

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Ravendriver
How many
By Ravendriver | 01/25/12 - 04:21 pm

artifacts end up in the private collections of government employees?

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hearmeroar
IF YOU KNOW SOMETHING
By hearmeroar | 01/25/12 - 05:42 pm

Ravendriver: REPORT IT.

Elsewise, STFU.

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hearmeroar
ALARIC
By hearmeroar | 01/25/12 - 05:50 pm

Confusing msg.

You're blaming the City for the collapse of the SQ? No. That was the State, which had been running it since its inception, never putting money into it.

The City took over the SQ and buildings in good faith, not realizing the depth of the lack of commitment by the State for DECADES.

The City has a STAFF archaeologist, which does NOT preclude other archaeologists or contract companies from working in St. Augustine.

The reality show woman (Mandelbaum) is a self-admitted "digger" for "treasure." She is NOT an archaeologist.

The metal-detecting Bob Spratley leads his friends from Georgia and elsewhere to archaeologoical sites on government and private property to LOOT -- and just for good measure, he sends his friends back to their home states with cultural material they have STOLEN from us.

St. Augustine Record: City to oppose eminent domain -- Resident: FSDB is committing 'neighborhood homicide'

2012-01-25T15:21:00.001-08:00

Posted: January 23, 2012 - 11:15pm
By PETER GUINTA
peter.guinta@staugustine.com

Resident: FSDB is committing ‘neighborhood homicide’

A simmering, decade-long zoning dispute between the city and The Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind reached a low boil Monday night as residents of the historic Nelmar Terrace neighborhood strongly protested a proposed compromise agreement hammered out with the school.

Nelmar resident Melinda Rakoncy told the City Commission that if the school’s attempts to achieve eminent domain power succeed, “that is war on the city of St. Augustine. It would strip the city forever of its ability to control its own growth.”

Rakoncay explained that, with that power, FSDB could force the purchase of any piece of land in the city.

House bill 1037, filed by state Rep. Bill Proctor, R,St. Augustine, would not only give the school eminent domain power but make the school’s zoning violations permanent after July 1.

Senate Bill 1348 was filed as a companion bill to Proctor’s. Both would delete the present requirement that FSDB cooperate with local authorities in the restoration of school facilities.

On a motion by Vice Mayor Leanna Freeman, the commission voted 5-0 to approve a resolution opposing that legislation.

Proctor — who is term limited — did not attend Monday, but has said he wants FSDB to have eminent domain power before he leaves office.

Rakoncay said, “He’s not representing his district or the city. He’s representing the school.”

St. Augustine activist Ed Slavin said Proctor has had a “close and intimate relationship” with FSDB as a board member and chairman of the board for years.

“This as a conflict of interest for him,” Slavin said. “Let him be here under oath and not hiding in Tallahassee.”

Former Nelmar neighborhood Lisa Lloyd said she loved the school and its mission, but added that its administrators have “used children’s disabilities to hide their misbehavior. If you let those (zoning) violations go, why would anyone else in the city follow the law? It’s frightening. Taking people’s homes away form them is completely reprehensible.”

FSDB officials have said several times that they have no plans to use eminent domain. They just want to be protected from gouging when they want to purchase a piece of land, they said.

But it’s doubtful whether any member of the City Commission or any Nelmar Terrace resident believes that.

Multiple residents said they were “disappointed” at the terms of a mediated agreement worked out between the city and FSDB giving the school permanent control over a city alleyway. For that parcel, the public would get access to two strips of land — one along Nelmar Avenue and the other along the Intracoastal, though they would not have access to the water.

City Attorney Ron Brown laid out the city’s choices:

■ If the mediation proposal is rejected, things stay as they are until new proposals can be worked out. If the eminent domain bills pass, however, the city has no recourse and the school has no incentive to negotiate.

■ If the mediation proposal is approved, the city at least gets something. So if the eminent domain bills pass, the mediation provisions remain in effect.

The major issues include the usage and fencing of the Collins House on Nelmar, the future use of the vacant eastern half of the Genoply Tract, the possession and use of an alley between Milton and Nelmar streets that has been public since 1912, and of course, eminent domain.

Brown said the mediation proposals are “the best we think we can do at this time. (If the bills pass), the Legislature will have the effect of legalizing what the school has done on that property.”

One of the primary concerns the neighborhood has with the Collins House is reducing its eight-foot institutional security fence to six feet, he said.

Commissioner Nancy Sikes-Kline, who as one of the mediators spent 16 grueling hours working on the agreement, said she wasn’t happy with the result.

“But it’s here. We can modify it,” she said, adding that she was not able to recommend the agreement. “I wanted to close this wound that has been festering for so many years. This was the best we could do.”

Alfred Street resident Jessica Misterly said she was disappointed with the proposal, which she felt was “skewed toward FSDB. The city gets little or nothing.”

Nelmar resident Jeanette Booth said FSDB is not governed by publicly elected officials and said she opposed the bills.

“We want to be good neighbors, but we want (FSDB) to follow the laws,” Booth said.

James Register, of 15 Genoply St., the only resident on that street that hadn’t sold to FSDB, said the school offered him $80,000 for his house, then $125,000 and then $140,000.

“I’ve lived here since 1967,” he said. “(After eminent domain takes my house) what are you going to do with me? I’m waiting for someone to knock on my door and say, ‘Mr. Register, congratulations! You’re now part of the FSDB campus’”

James Carr called the school “an 800-pound gorilla, above the law, above reproach. They can do what they want.”

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yathink
expand the campus outside of the congested city ,, nelmar
By yathink | 01/24/12 - 07:32 am

terrace residents have a right to enjoy their property without being harassed by f.s.d.b. and it's eminent domain ideas... proctor should butt out and cease using his relationship with the school to enable them to STEAL property... buses can transport the kids between campuses,, if managed properly, they won't have to bus them at all !!!>>>yathink

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Jazyddrums
Ed Slavin = yathink
By Jazyddrums | 01/24/12 - 07:41 am

Ed Slavin = yathink

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Ravendriver
Proctor
By Ravendriver | 01/24/12 - 09:13 am

you should be ashamed of yourself. Follow the $$$$.

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peanut
local control?
By peanut | 01/24/12 - 06:31 pm

If Proctor had his way, Flagler College would have eminent domain. Under his leadership, the college would buy property, tear down historic houses and then build a fake historical building. The college has a master plan but somehow the city is never given access to their plans. They are produced piecemeal so that no one can examine the whole plan. This is also his plan for D&B. He doesn't care that he is destroying one of the nicest areas of this city.. Due to the water all around, our neighborhoods are small and expanding the school is destroying the quality of life there. The campus used to be a safe place for neighbors to ride bicycles and fish. a.. that has already been destroyed. The abuse on the campus was not from visitors, it was from employees.

New York Times re: Sullivan & Cromwell's Abandonment of Death Penalty Client -- Supreme Court Grants Relief

2012-01-20T10:02:00.001-08:00

January 18, 2012
Justices Rule for Inmate After Mailroom Mix-Up
By ADAM LIPTAK

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that an Alabama death row inmate who missed a filing deadline thanks to a mix-up in the mailroom of a prominent New York law firm must be given another chance.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the majority in the 7-to-2 decision, said “no just system” would allow the missed deadline to be held against the inmate, Cory R. Maples, in light of how he had been treated by lawyers from Sullivan & Cromwell, who handled his case without charge after he was convicted of murdering two people in 1997. The decision allows lower federal courts to consider Mr. Maples’s claim that his trial court lawyers were ineffective notwithstanding the missed deadline in the state court system.

“Maples was disarmed by extraordinary circumstances quite beyond his control,” Justice Ginsburg wrote.

In a concurrence, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. described what had happened to Mr. Maples as “a veritable perfect storm of misfortune,” starting with the oddity that much of it was attributable to lawyers from “one of the country’s most prestigious and expensive” law firms.

“I have little doubt that the vast majority of criminal defendants would think that they had won the lottery if they were given the opportunity to be represented by attorneys from such a firm,” he added.

Yet two lawyers from Sullivan & Cromwell failed to inform Mr. Maples when they left the firm. Nor did they tell the court from which they were awaiting a ruling in his case. When two copies of that ruling were sent to the firm, it returned them unopened.

Justice Ginsburg’s opinion included a critique of Alabama’s capital justice system. At the time of Mr. Maples’s trial, court-appointed lawyers in capital cases were paid $40 an hour for time in court and $20 an hour otherwise, with a $1,000 cap on out-of-court work.

Mr. Maples was convicted of murdering two companions after a night of drinking. “His inexperienced and underfunded attorneys,” Justice Ginsburg wrote, “failed to develop and raise an obvious intoxication defense, did not object to several egregious instances of prosecutorial misconduct and woefully underprepared for the penalty phase of his trial.”

At one point the lawyers apologized to the jury, saying that they “may appear to be stumbling around in the dark.” Even so, the jury’s vote recommending the death penalty was 10 to 2, the minimum required under Alabama law.

Justice Ginsburg was also critical of how Alabama handles challenges to convictions. Alabama is nearly alone among the states, she wrote, in that it “does not guarantee representation to indigent capital defendants in post-conviction proceedings.” Instead, the state relies on volunteer lawyers from public interest law firms and from the pro bono practices of major firms.

Two young associates from Sullivan & Cromwell’s New York office, Jaasi Munanka and Clara Ingen-Housz, filed a post-conviction petition in state court in August 2001, arguing that Mr. Maples’s trial lawyers had been ineffective. The next summer, they left the firm.

In May 2003, the state court denied the petition, and a clerk sent copies of the ruling to the two lawyers. Sullivan & Cromwell’s mailroom returned the envelopes unopened. One was stamped “Returned to Sender — Attempted Unknown,” the other “Return to Sender — Left Firm.”

The deadline for an appeal came and went, and state and federal courts ruled against Mr. Maples’s request to waive the deadline.

The usual rule in post-conviction proceedings is that a lawyer’s mistakes are imputed to the client, on the theory that the lawyer is the client’s agent. “We do not disturb that general rule,” Justice Ginsburg wrote.

What was different here, she said, was that the lawyers had abandoned their client, severing the agency relationship. “Moreover,” Justice Ginsburg said in announcing the decision from the bench Wednesday morning, Mr. Maples “lacked any clue that he had better fend for himself.”

Justice Antonin Scalia, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, dissented. Justice Scalia said Mr. Maples was represented throughout, as other Sullivan & Cromwell lawyers had taken action when they learned of the missed deadline. Justice Ginsburg responded that “the record is cloudy” on this point, adding that the firm operated under “a significant conflict of interest” at that point.

Justice Scalia noted that an Alabama lawyer, John G. Butler Jr., had also represented Mr. Maples as local counsel and had also received a copy of the ruling. Justice Ginsburg said Mr. Butler had been Mr. Maples’s lawyer in name only, in order to satisfy a requirement of Alabama law concerning out-of-state lawyers.

Justice Scalia acknowledged the majority’s “understandable sense of frustration.” But he said the majority opinion in the case, Maples v. Thomas, No. 10-63, had provided a road map to other death row inmates. “The trick will be to allege,” Justice Scalia wrote, “not that counsel was ineffective, but rather that the counsel’s ineffectiveness demonstrates that he was not a genuinely representative agent.”

Justice Ginsburg wrote that the decision was limited and straightforward.

“In these circumstances,” Justice Ginsburg wrote, “no just system would lay the default at Maples’s death-cell door.”

Death Row Inmate “Trapped … Abandoned Without a Word of Warning” by Sullivan & Cromwell – Supreme Court Provides Relief From Malpractice

2012-01-19T14:32:00.000-08:00

Clara Ingen-Housz (now with another law firm in Hong Kong)

Jaasi J. Munanka (now with another law firm in Denver)

Do some very large corporate law firms objectify their clients in their pro bono cases. Did Sullivan & Cromwell commit legal malpractice that almost killed a client?

The United States Supreme Court found this week that two New York Big Law Firm lawyers (from Sullivan & Cromwell)(above) “abandoned” their Alabama Death Row client when they left the law firm for new jobs without ever telling him, and without securing other counsel for him, leaving him “trapped” and “abandoning him without a word of warning.”

The Sullivan & Cromwell mailroom sent two court orders back to the court, marked return to sender. As a result, the death penalty inmate missed his deadline to appeal from denial of post-conviction relief for inadequate counsel.

Based on Sullivan & Cromwell’s “abandonment,” our Supreme Court reversed all of the lower courts. If it had not, Mr. Maples would have died at the hands of SULLIVAN & CROMWELL’s notion of “pro bono” legal counsel.

Do large American corporate law firms routinely “go through the motions” on pro bono work – enough to attract awards, but not enough to matter in the lives of the people they help?

What is the meaning of pro bono work at large corporate law firms?

How can pro bono law standards be improved so this never happens again?

What do you reckon?

Read this excerpt from the Supreme Court’s 7-2 decision by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, decided earlier this week, in MAPLES v. THOMAS, COMMISSIONER, ALABAMA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, 565 U.S. ___ (2012)

… Two out-of-state volunteers represented Maples inpostconviction proceedings: Jaasi Munanka and Clara Ingen-Housz, both associates at the New York offices ofthe Sullivan & Cromwell law firm. At the time, Alabama required out-of-state attorneys to associate local counselwhen seeking admission to practice pro hac vice before an Alabama court, regardless of the nature of the proceeding.Rule Governing Admission to the Ala. State Bar VII (2000)(hereinafter Rule VII).3 The Alabama Rule further pre-scribed that the local attorney’s name “appear on all no¬tices, orders, pleadings, and other documents filed in thecause,” and that local counsel “accept joint and several responsibility with the foreign attorney to the client, to opposing parties and counsel, and to the court or adminis¬trative agency in all matters [relating to the case].”Rule VII(C).

allowing the two New York attorneys to appear pro hac vice on behalf of Maples. App. to Pet. for Cert. 255a.Given his lack of “resources, available time [and] experi¬ence,” Butler told the Sullivan & Cromwell lawyers, he could not “deal with substantive issues in the case.” Ibid. The Sullivan & Cromwell attorneys accepted Butler’sconditions. Id., at 257a. This arrangement between out¬of-state and local attorneys, it appears, was hardly atypi-cal. See Justices Brief 36 (“The fact is that local counsel for out-of-state attorneys in post-conviction litigation mostoften do nothing other than provide the mechanism forforeign attorneys to be admitted.”).
With the aid of his pro bono counsel, Maples filed apetition for postconviction relief under Alabama Rule of Criminal Procedure 32.4 Among other claims, Maplesasserted that his court-appointed attorneys provided con¬stitutionally ineffective assistance during both guilt and penalty phases of his capital trial. App. 29–126. He alleged, in this regard, that his inexperienced and under¬funded attorneys failed to develop and raise an obvious intoxication defense, did not object to several egregious instances of prosecutorial misconduct, and woefully un¬derprepared for the penalty phase of his trial. The State responded by moving for summary dismissal of Maples’ petition. On December 27, 2001, the trial court denied the State’s motion.
Some seven months later,
Munanka and Ingen-Housz associated Huntsville, Ala¬bama attorney John Butler as local counsel. Notwith¬standing his obligations under Alabama law, Butlerinformed Munanka and Ingen-Housz, “at the outset,” that he would serve as local counsel only for the purpose of allowing the two New York attorneys to appear pro hac vice on behalf of Maples. App. to Pet. for Cert. 255a.Given his lack of “resources, available time [and] experi¬ence,” Butler told the Sullivan & Cromwell lawyers, he could not “deal with substantive issues in the case.” Ibid. The Sullivan & Cromwell attorneys accepted Butler’sconditions. Id., at 257a. This arrangement between out¬of-state and local attorneys, it appears, was hardly atypi¬cal. See Justices Brief 36 (“The fact is that local counsel for out-of-state attorneys in post-conviction litigation mostoften do nothing other than provide the mechanism forforeign attorneys to be admitted.”).
With the aid of his pro bono counsel, Maples filed apetition for postconviction relief under Alabama Rule of Criminal Procedure 32.4 Among other claims, Maplesasserted that his court-appointed attorneys provided con¬stitutionally ineffective assistance during both guilt and penalty phases of his capital trial. App. 29–126. He alleged, in this regard, that his inexperienced and under¬funded attorneys failed to develop and raise an obvious intoxication defense, did not object to several egregious instances of prosecutorial misconduct, and woefully un¬derprepared for the penalty phase of his trial. The State responded by moving for summary dismissal of Maples’ petition. On December 27, 2001, the trial court denied the State’s motion.
Some seven months later, in the summer of 2002, both Munanka and Ingen-Housz left Sullivan & Cromwell. App. to Pet. for Cert. 258a. Munanka gained a clerkship with a federal judge; Ingen-Housz accepted a position withthe European Commission in Belgium. Ibid. Neither attorney told Maples of their departure from Sullivan &Cromwell or of their resulting inability to continue to continue to represent him. In disregard of Alabama law, see Ala. Rule Crim. Proc. 6.2, Comment, neither attorney sought the trial court’s leave to withdraw, App. to Pet. for Cert. 223a.Compounding Munanka’s and Ingen-Housz’s inaction, noother Sullivan & Cromwell lawyer entered an appearance on Maples’ behalf, moved to substitute counsel, or other¬wise notified the court of any change in Maples’ represen¬tation. Ibid.
Another nine months passed. During this time period, no Sullivan & Cromwell attorneys assigned to Maples’case sought admission to the Alabama bar, entered ap-pearances on Maples’ behalf, or otherwise advised the Alabama court that Munanka and Ingen-Housz were no longer Maples’ attorneys. Thus, Munanka and Ingen-Housz (along with Butler) remained Maples’ listed, and only, “attorneys of record.” Id., at 223a.
There things stood when, in May 2003, the trial court,without holding a hearing, entered an order denying Maples’ Rule 32 petition. App. 146–225.5
5One of Maples’ attorneys observed, without contradiction, that the trial court’s order was a “word for word copy of the proposed Order that the State had submitted [with] its [December 2001] Motion to Dismiss.” Id., at 300.

The clerk of the Alabama trial court mailed copies of the order to Maples’ three attorneys of record. He sent Munanka’s and Ingen¬Housz’s copies to Sullivan & Cromwell’s New York ad¬dress, which the pair had provided upon entering their appearances.
When those copies arrived at Sullivan & Cromwell, Munanka and Ingen-Housz had long since departed. The notices, however, were not forwarded to another Sullivan & Cromwell attorney. Instead, a mailroom employee sent the unopened envelopes back to the court. “Returned to Sender—Attempted, Unknown” was stamped on the enve¬lope addressed to Munanka. App. to Reply to Brief in Opposition 8a. A similar stamp appeared on the envelopeaddressed to Ingen-Housz, along with the handwrittennotation “Return to Sender—Left Firm.” Id., at 7a.
Upon receiving back the unopened envelopes he had mailed to Munanka and Ingen-Housz, the Alabama court clerk took no further action. In particular, the clerk didnot contact Munanka or Ingen-Housz at the personal telephone numbers or home addresses they had providedin their pro hac vice applications. See Ingen-Housz Veri¬fied Application for Admission to Practice Under Rule VII,
p. 1; and Munanka Verified Application for Admission toPractice Under Rule VII, p. 1, in Maples v. State, No. CC– 95–842.60 (C. C. Morgan Cty., Ala.). Nor did the clerk alert Sullivan & Cromwell or Butler. Butler received his copy of the order, but did not act on it. App. to Pet. forCert. 256a. He assumed that Munanka and Ingen-Housz, who had been “CC’d” on the order, would take care of filing an appeal. Ibid.
Meanwhile, the clock ticked on Maples’ appeal. Under Alabama’s Rules of Appellate Procedure, Maples had 42days to file a notice of appeal from the trial court’s May 22,2003 order denying Maples’ petition for postconvictionrelief. Rule 4(a)(1) (2000). No appeal notice was filed, and the time allowed for filing expired on July 7, 2003.
A little over a month later, on August 13, 2003, Ala¬bama Assistant Attorney General Jon Hayden, the attor¬ney representing the State in Maples’ collateral review proceedings, sent a letter directly to Maples. App. to Pet.for Cert. 253a–254a. Hayden’s letter informed Maples of the missed deadline for initiating an appeal within theState’s system, and notified him that four weeks remained during which he could file a federal habeas petition. Ibid. Hayden mailed the letter to Maples only, using his prison address. Ibid. No copy was sent to Maples’ attorneys ofrecord, or to anyone else acting on Maples’ behalf. Ibid.
Upon receiving the State’s letter, Maples immediately contacted his mother. Id., at 258a. She telephoned Sulli¬van & Cromwell to inquire about her son’s case. Ibid. Prompted by her call, Sullivan & Cromwell attorneysMarc De Leeuw, Felice Duffy, and Kathy Brewer submit¬ted a motion, through Butler, asking the trial court toreissue its order denying Maples’ Rule 32 petition, thereby restarting the 42-day appeal period. Id., at 222a.
The trial court denied the motion, id., at 222a–225a, not¬ing that Munanka and Ingen-Housz had not withdrawnfrom the case and, consequently, were “still attor-neys of record for the petitioner,” id., at 223a. Further¬more, the court added, attorneys De Leeuw, Duffy, andBrewer had not “yet been admitted to practice in Ala¬bama” or “entered appearances as attorneys of record.” Ibid. “How,” the court asked, “can a Circuit Clerk in Decatur, Alabama know what is going on in a law firm inNew York, New York?” Id., at 223a–224a. Declining toblame the clerk for the missed notice of appeal deadline, the court said it was “unwilling to enter into subterfuge in order to gloss over mistakes made by counsel for the peti¬tioner.” Ibid.
Maples next petitioned the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals for a writ of mandamus, granting him leave to file an out-of-time appeal. Rejecting Maples’ plea, the Court of Criminal Appeals determined that, although the clerk had“assumed a duty to notify the parties of the resolution ofMaples’s Rule 32 petition,” the clerk had satisfied that obligation by sending notices to the attorneys of record atthe addresses those attorneys provided. Id., at 234a–235a. Butler’s receipt of the order, the court observed, sufficed to notify all attorneys “in light of their apparent co-counsel status.” Id., at 235a–236a (quoting Thomas v. Kellett, 489 So. 2d 554, 555 (Ala. 1986)). The Alabama Supreme Court summarily affirmed the Court of Criminal Appeals’ judg¬ment, App. to Pet. for Cert. 237a, and this Court denied certiorari, Maples v. Alabama, 543 U. S. 1148 (2005)
,,, As amici for Maples explain, a significant conflict of interest arose for the firm once the crucial deadline passed. Brief for Legal Ethics Professors et al. as Amici Curiae 23–27. Following the default, the firm’s interest in avoiding damage to its own reputation was at odds with Maples’ strongest argument—i.e., that his attorneys had abandoned him, therefore he had cause to be relieved from the default. Yet Sullivan & Cromwell did not cede Maples’ representation to a new attorney, who could have made Maples’ abandonment argument plain to the Court of Appeals. Instead, the firm represented Maples through briefing andoral argument in the Eleventh Circuit, where they attempted to cast responsibility for the mishap on the clerk of the Alabama trial court. Given Sullivan & Cromwell’s conflict of interest, Maples’ federal habeas petition, prepared and submitted by the firm, is not persuasive evi¬dence that Maples, prior to the default, ever “viewed himself” as repre¬sented by “the firm,” see post, at 4, rather than by his attorneys of record, Munanka and Ingen-Housz.
…. “The cause and prejudice requirement,” we have said, “shows due regard for States’ finality and comity interestswhile ensuring that ‘fundamental fairness [remains] the central concern of the writ of habeas corpus.’” Dretke v. Haley, 541 U. S. 386, 393 (2004) (quoting Strickland v. Washington, 466 U. S. 668, 697 (1984)). In the unusual circumstances of this case, principles of agency law andfundamental fairness point to the same conclusion: Therewas indeed cause to excuse Maples’ procedural default. Through no fault of his own, Maples lacked the assistanceof any authorized attorney during the 42 days Alabama allows for noticing an appeal from a trial court’s denial of postconviction relief. As just observed, he had no reason to suspect that, in reality, he had been reduced to pro se status. Maples was disarmed by extraordinary circum¬stances quite beyond his control. He has shown ample cause, we hold, to excuse the procedural default into which he was trapped when counsel of record abandoned himwithout a word of warning.
III Having found no cause to excuse the failure to file atimely notice of appeal in state court, the District Court and the Eleventh Circuit did not reach the question of prejudice. See supra, at 10–11. That issue, therefore, remains open for decision on remand.
* * * For the reasons stated, the judgment of the Court ofAppeals for the Eleventh Circuit is reversed, and the caseis remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.

Why BRUCE MAGUIRE Is Still a Lugibrous Goober Who Knows Not that He Knows Not That He Knows Not!

2012-01-19T07:42:00.001-08:00

See quote below.

Both BRUCE MAGUIRE and his twin brother have been County Commissioners.

BRUCE MAGUIRE and other pro-developer tools were defeated in recent elections.

BRUCE MAGUIRE has been fairly quiet lately.

His latest quote (below)typifies the genre of "thought" from this cognitive miser.

IN HAEC VERBA -- Quote from Former County Commissioner BRUCE MAGUIRE from this week's Folio Weekly

2012-01-19T07:40:00.000-08:00

BRUCE MAGUIRE (Right) with Virginia Whetstone Maguire

BRUCE ALMIGHTY

"When will the liberals realize and accept that Obama's actions are nothing more than power grabs to make us all subservient to him and the government?"
-- Former St. Johns County Commissioner Bruce Maguire, in an apparently unironic Facebook post.

Robert F. Kennedy Spoke About Poverty, Inequality and the Absurdity of Some Misguided Americans' Obsession With thethe Gross National Product

2012-01-18T15:29:00.000-08:00

Remarks of Robert F. Kennedy at the University of Kansas, March 18, 1968

Robert F. Kennedy
University of Kansas
March 18, 1968

This text was transcribed for the convenience of readers and researchers from a recording in the library's holdings. It reflects Robert F. Kennedy's speaking rhythms, the starts and stops and repetitions of his oral performance. It is not an exact setting down of every utterance Robert F. Kennedy made on the occasion, which would include the "ers" and "ums" and other delay sounds that are an inevitable part of an individual's speech patterns. Furthermore, as with any transcription, there is an unavoidable element of interpretation. Interested researchers are invited and encouraged to come in and listen to the recording themselves.

Thank you very much. Chancellor, Governor and Mrs. Docking, Senator and Mrs. Pierson, ladies and gentlemen and my friends, I'm very pleased to be here. I'm really not here to make a speech I've come because I came from Kansas State and they want to send their love to all of you. They did. That's all they talk about over there, how much they love you. Actually, I want to establish the fact that I am not an alumnus of Villanova.

I'm very pleased and very touched, as my wife is, at your warm reception here. I think of my colleagues in the United States Senate, I think of my friends there, and I think of the warmth that exists in the Senate of the United States - I don't know why you're laughing - I was sick last year and I received a message from the Senate of the United States which said: "We hope you recover," and the vote was forty-two to forty.

And then they took a poll in one of the financial magazines of five hundred of the largest businessmen in the United States, to ask them, what political leader they most admired, who they wanted to see as President of the United States, and I received one vote, and I understand they're looking for him. I could take all my supporters to lunch, but I'm - I don't know whether you're going to like what I'm going to say today but I just want you to remember, as you look back upon this day, and when it comes to a question of who you're going to support - that it was a Kennedy who got you out of class.

I am very pleased to be here with my colleagues, Senator Pierson, who I think has contributed so much in the Senate of the United States - who has fought for the interests of Kansas and has had a distinguished career, and I'm very proud to be associated with him. And Senator Carlson who is not here, who is one of the most respected members of the Senate of the United States - respected not just on the Republican side - by the Democratic side, by all of his colleagues and I'm pleased and proud to be in the Senate with Senator Carlson of the State of Kansas.

And I'm happy to be here with an old friend, Governor Docking. I don't think there was anyone that was more committed to President Kennedy and made more of an effort under the most adverse circumstances and with the most difficult of situations than his father, who was then Governor of the State of Kansas - nobody I worked with more closely, myself, when I was in Los Angeles. We weren't 100 percent successful, but that was a relationship that I will always value, and I know how highly President Kennedy valued it and I'm very pleased to see him - and to have seen his mother, Mrs. Docking today also, so I'm very pleased to be in his State.

And then I'm pleased to be here because I like to see all of you, in addition.

In 1824, when Thomas Hart Benton was urging in Congress the development of Iowa and other western territories, he was opposed by Daniel Webster, the Senator from Massachusetts. "What," asked Webster, "what do we want with this vast and worthless area? This region of savages and wild beasts. Of deserts of shifting sands and of whirlwinds. Of dust, and of cactus and of prairie dogs.

"To what use," he said, "could we ever hope to put these great deserts? I will never vote for one-cent from the public treasury, to place the west one inch closer to Boston, than it is now." And that is why, I am here today, instead of my brother Edward.

I'm glad to come here to the home of the man who publicly wrote: "If our colleges and universities do not breed men who riot, who rebel, who attack life with all the youthful vision and vigor, then there is something wrong with our colleges. The more riots that come out of our college campuses, the better the world for tomorrow." And despite all the accusations against me, those words were not written by me, they were written by that notorious seditionist, William Allen White. And I know what great affection this university has for him. He is an honored man today, here on your campus and around the rest of the nation. But when he lived and wrote, he was reviled as an extremist and worse. For he spoke, he spoke as he believed. He did not conceal his concern in comforting words. He did not delude his readers or himself with false hopes and with illusions. This spirit of honest confrontation is what America needs today. It has been missing all too often in the recent years and it is one of the reasons that I run for President of the United States.

For we as a people, we as a people, are strong enough, we are brave enough to be told the truth of where we stand. This country needs honesty and candor in its political life and from the President of the United States. But I don't want to run for the presidency - I don't want America to make the critical choice of direction and leadership this year without confronting that truth. I don't want to win support of votes by hiding the American condition in false hopes or illusions. I want us to find out the promise of the future, what we can accomplish here in the United States, what this country does stand for and what is expected of us in the years ahead. And I also want us to know and examine where we've gone wrong. And I want all of us, young and old, to have a chance to build a better country and change the direction of the United States of America.

This morning I spoke about the war in Vietnam, and I will speak briefly about it in a few moments. But there is much more to this critical election year than the war in Vietnam.

It is, at a root, the root of all of it, the national soul of the United States. The President calls it "restlessness." Our cabinet officers, such as John Gardiner and others tell us that America is deep in a malaise of spirit: discouraging initiative, paralyzing will and action, and dividing Americans from one another, by their age, their views and by the color of their skin and I don't think we have to accept that here in the United States of America.

Demonstrators shout down government officials and the government answers by drafting demonstrators. Anarchists threaten to burn the country down and some have begun to try, while tanks have patrolled American streets and machine guns have fired at American children. I don't think this a satisfying situation for the United States of America.

Our young people - the best educated, and the best comforted in our history, turn from the Peace Corps and public commitment of a few years ago - to lives of disengagement and despair - many of them turned on with drugs and turned off on America - none of them here, of course, at Kansas - right?

All around us, all around us, - not just on the question of Vietnam, not just on the question of the cities, not just the question of poverty, not just on the problems of race relations - but all around us, and why you are so concerned and why you are so disturbed - the fact is, that men have lost confidence in themselves, in each other, it is confidence which has sustained us so much in the past - rather than answer the cries of deprivation and despair - cries which the President's Commission on Civil Disorders tells us could split our nation finally asunder - rather than answer these desperate cries, hundreds of communities and millions of citizens are looking for their answers, to force and repression and private gun stocks - so that we confront our fellow citizen across impossible barriers of hostility and mistrust and again, I don't believe that we have to accept that. I don't believe that it's necessary in the United States of America. I think that we can work together - I don't think that we have to shoot at each other, to beat each other, to curse each other and criticize each other, I think that we can do better in this country. And that is why I run for President of the United States.

And if we seem powerless to stop this growing division between Americans, who at least confront one another, there are millions more living in the hidden places, whose names and faces are completely unknown - but I have seen these other Americans - I have seen children in Mississippi starving, their bodies so crippled from hunger and their minds have been so destroyed for their whole life that they will have no future. I have seen children in Mississippi - here in the United States - with a gross national product of $800 billion dollars - I have seen children in the Delta area of Mississippi with distended stomachs, whose faces are covered with sores from starvation, and we haven't developed a policy so we can get enough food so that they can live, so that their children, so that their lives are not destroyed, I don't think that's acceptable in the United States of America and I think we need a change.

I have seen Indians living on their bare and meager reservations, with no jobs, with an unemployment rate of 80 percent, and with so little hope for the future, so little hope for the future that for young people, for young men and women in their teens, the greatest cause of death amongst them is suicide.

That they end their lives by killing themselves - I don't think that we have to accept that - for the first American, for this minority here in the United States. If young boys and girls are so filled with despair when they are going to high school and feel that their lives are so hopeless and that nobody's going to care for them, nobody's going to be involved with them, and nobody's going to bother with them, that they either hang themselves, shoot themselves or kill themselves - I don't think that's acceptable and I think the United States of America - I think the American people, I think we can do much, much better. And I run for the presidency because of that, I run for the presidency because I have seen proud men in the hills of Appalachia, who wish only to work in dignity, but they cannot, for the mines are closed and their jobs are gone and no one - neither industry, nor labor, nor government - has cared enough to help.

I think we here in this country, with the unselfish spirit that exists in the United States of America, I think we can do better here also.

I have seen the people of the black ghetto, listening to ever greater promises of equality and of justice, as they sit in the same decaying schools and huddled in the same filthy rooms - without heat - warding off the cold and warding off the rats.

If we believe that we, as Americans, are bound together by a common concern for each other, then an urgent national priority is upon us. We must begin to end the disgrace of this other America.

And this is one of the great tasks of leadership for us, as individuals and citizens this year. But even if we act to erase material poverty, there is another greater task, it is to confront the poverty of satisfaction - purpose and dignity - that afflicts us all. Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product - if we judge the United States of America by that - that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.

If this is true here at home, so it is true elsewhere in world. From the beginning our proudest boast has been the promise of Jefferson, that we, here in this country would be the best hope of mankind. And now, as we look at the war in Vietnam, we wonder if we still hold a decent respect for the opinions of mankind and whether the opinion maintained a descent respect for us or whether like Athens of old, we will forfeit sympathy and support, and ultimately our very security, in the single-minded pursuit of our own goals and our own objectives. I do not want, and I do believe that most Americans do not want, to sell out America's interest to simply withdraw - to raise the white flag of surrender in Vietnam - that would be unacceptable to us as a people, and unacceptable to us as a country. But I am concerned about the course of action that we are presently following in South Vietnam. I am concerned, I am concerned about the fact that this has been made America's War. It was said, a number of years ago that this is "their war" "this is the war of the South Vietnamese" that "we can help them, but we can't win it for them" but over the period of the last three years we have made the war and the struggle in South Vietnam our war, and I think that's unacceptable.

I don't accept the idea that this is just a military action, that this is just a military effort, and every time we have had difficulties in South Vietnam and Southeast Asia we have had only one response, we have had only one way to deal with it - month after month - year after year we have dealt with it in only on way and that's to send more military men and increase our military power and I don't think that's what the kind of a struggle that it is in Southeast Asia.

I think that this is a question of the people of South Vietnam, I think its a question of the people of South Vietnam feeling its worth their efforts - that they're going to make the sacrifice - that they feel that their country and their government is worth fighting for and I think the development of the last several years have shown, have demonstrated that the people of South Vietnam feel no association and no affiliation for the government of Saigon and I don't think it's up to us here in the United States, I don't think it's up to us here in the United States, to say that we're going to destroy all of South Vietnam because we have a commitment there. The commander of the American forces at Ben Tre said we had to destroy that city in order to save it. So 38,000 people were wiped out or made refugees. We here in the United States - not just the United States government, not just the commanders of and forces in South Vietnam, the United States government and every human being that's in this room - we are part of that decision and I don't think that we need do that any longer and I think we should change our policy.

I don't want to be part of a government, I don't want to be part of the United States, I don't want to be part of the American people, and have them write of us as they wrote of Rome: "They made a desert and they called it peace."

I think that we should go to the negotiating table, and I think we should take the steps to go to the negotiating table.

And I've said it over the period of the last two years, I think that we have a chance to have negotiations, and the possibility of meaningful negotiations, but last February, a year ago, when the greatest opportunity existed for negotiations the Administration and the President of the United States felt that the military victory was right around the corner and we sent a message to Ho Chi Minh, in February 8th of 1967 virtually asking for their unconditional surrender, we are not going to obtain the unconditional surrender of the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong anymore than they're going to obtain the unconditional surrender of the United States of America. We're going to have to negotiate, we're going to have to make compromises, we're going to have to negotiate with the National Liberation Front. But people can argue, "That's unfortunate that we have to negotiate with the National Liberation Front," but that is a fact of life. We have three choices: We can either pull out of South Vietnam unilaterally and raise the white flag - I think that's unacceptable.

Second, we can continue to escalate, we can continue to send more men there, until we have millions and millions of more men and we can continue to bomb North Vietnam, and in my judgment we will be no nearer success, we will be no nearer victory than we are now in February of 1968.

And the third step that we can take is to go to the negotiating table. We can go to the negotiating table and not achieve everything that we wish. One of the things that we're going to have to accept as American people, but the other, the other alternative is so unacceptable. One of the things that we're going to have to accept as American people and that the United States government must accept, is that the National Liberation Front is going to play a role in the future political process of South Vietnam.

And we're going to have to negotiate with them. That they are going to play some role in the future political process of South Vietnam, that there are going to be elections and the people of South Vietnam, are ultimately going to determine and decide their own future.

That is the course of action, that is the course of action that I would like to see. I would like to see the United States government to make it clear to the government of Saigon that we are not going to tolerate the corruption and the dishonesty. I think that we should make it clear to the government of Saigon that if we're going to draft young men, 18 years of age here in the United States, if we're going to draft young men who are 19 years-old here in the United States, and wer're going to send them to fight and die in Khe Sanh, that we want the government of South Vietnam to draft their 18-year-olds and their 19-year-olds.

And I want to make it clear that if the government of Saigon, feels Khe Sanh or Que Son and the area in the demilitarized zone are so important, if Khe San is so important to the government of Saigon, I want to see those American marines out of there and South Vietnamese troops in there.

I want to have an explanation as to why American boys killed, two weeks ago, in South Vietnam, were three times as many - more than three times as many, as the soldiers of South Vietnam. I want to understand why the casualties and the deaths, over the period of the last two weeks, at the height of the fighting, should be so heavily American casualties, as compared to the South Vietnamese. This is their war. I think we have to make the effort to help them, I think that we have to make the effort to fight, but I don't think that we should have to carry the whole burden of that war, I think the South Vietnamese should.

And if I am elected President of the United States, with help, with your help, these are the kinds of policies that I'm going to put into operation.

We can do better here in the United States, we can do better. We can do better in our relationships to other countries around the rest of the globe. President Kennedy, when he campaigned in 1960, he talked about the loss of prestige that the United States had suffered around the rest of the globe, but look at what our condition is at the present time. The President of the United States goes to a meeting of the OAS at Montevideo- can he go into the city of Montevideo? Or can he travel through the cities of Latin America where there was such deep love and deep respect? He has to stay in a military base at Montevideo, with American ships out at sea and American helicopters overhead in order to ensure that he's protected, I don't think that that's acceptable.

I think that we should have conditions here in the United States, and support enough for our policies, so that the President of the United States can travel freely and clearly across all the cities of this country, and not just to military bases.

I think there's more that we can do internally here, I think there's more that we can do in South Vietnam. I don't think we have to accept the situation, as we have it at the moment. I think that we can do better, and I think the American people think that we can do better.

George Bernard Shaw once wrote, "Some people see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say, why not?"

So I come here to Kansas to ask for your help. In the difficult five months ahead, before the convention in Chicago, I ask for your help and for your assistance. If you believe that the United States can do better. If you believe that we should change our course of action. If you believe that the United States stands for something here internally as well as elsewhere around the globe, I ask for your help and your assistance and your hand over the period of the next five months.

And when we win in November, and when we win in November, and we begin a new period of time for the United States of America - I want the next generation of Americans to look back upon this period and say as they said of Plato: "Joy was in those days, but to live." Thank you very much.

Washington Post: Supreme Court says people can sue telemarketers, others in federal court over nuisance calls

2012-01-18T15:27:00.001-08:00

By Associated Press, Updated: Wednesday, January 18, 12:30 PM

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is keeping telemarketers and other businesses on the hook for nuisance phone calls, letting those annoyed by the disruptions sue in federal as well as state courts.

The high court’s decision Wednesday involves a lawsuit claiming a debt collector harassed a man with repeated recorded calls.

Marcus Mims of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., said he kept getting the calls from Arrow Financial Services LLC, which was trying to collect a student loan debt for Sallie Mae. He sued for violations of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, passed by Congress to ban invasive telemarketing practices.

Mims’ lawsuit was thrown out by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which said that Congress did not explicitly give permission for federal lawsuits in the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, although the law does say people can file in state courts. Other federal courts ruled differently and let lawsuits move forward.

The high court said in a unanimous opinion that federal lawsuits are allowed under the law.

“Nothing in the text, structure, purpose or legislative history of the TCPA purports to deprive U.S. district courts of the jurisdiction they ordinarily have,” said Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the court.

The case now goes back to the appeals court in Atlanta.

The case is Mims v. Arrow Financial Services, LLC, 10-1195.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

St. Augustine celebrates King Day -- Eubanks: Build a strong foundation for the future

2012-01-17T14:49:00.000-08:00

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. with pickets on Washington Street, St. Augustine, Florida, June 1964

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. reacts in St. Augustine, Fla., after learning that the senate passed the civil rights bill, June 19, 1964. (AP Photo) Photo: STF, Anonymous / Beaumont

Read more: http://www.beaumontenterprise.com/photos/article/Dr-Martin-Luther-King-Jr-His-life-in-pictures-956071.php#ixzz1jl9L3zZu

Posted: January 16, 2012 - 11:45pm
By PETER GUINTA
peter.guinta@staugustine.com

Eubanks: Build a strong foundation for the future

The “gallant memories” of 400 years of black struggle for freedom by “dreamers and doers” should inspire future leaders, keynote speaker Gerald Eubanks said Monday at the 27th annual Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration breakfast.

Eubanks, 71, a retired St. Johns County educator, asked his fellow African-Americans to make a positive impact.

“Or would you prefer to be mere spectators?” he said. “Stay connected. The result of our remaining an extended family is a mutual sense of self-worth and pride, and a lifetime of camaraderie.”

The slave revolts that began in the 1600s only ended at the Civil War, and he was “delightedly shocked” to read of them.

“Don’t forget your history and heritage,” he said.

Eubanks also praised the “foot soldiers” of the Civil Rights struggle of 1964, and he unrolled a long list containing the names of those who fought for freedom and justice.

“Some of them are here today,” he said, and he quoted from the poem “Invictus”: “My head is bloody, but unbowed.”

The event was sponsored by The Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Committee of St. Johns County and its president, Sonee Carswell.

Temple Bet Yam’s Rabbi Mark Goldman compared King to a modern-day biblical prophet, “who heard and responded to the divine call, ‘Let my people go!’ He climbed mountains of human potential and his heavenly voice spoke truth to power. That’s his legacy. Together, let’s never deviate or detour from that path.”

St. Augustine Mayor Joe Boles spoke of the city’s efforts to build a new Civil Rights Museum in town by 2014 to commemorate the non-violent marches opposed by racist crowds and the resulting publicity that helped lead to passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Almarene T. Loundes said King had all the traits of a great leader: intelligence, confidence, charisma and determination to carry out his mission. “He was a man of integrity, a rare trait for leaders these days,” she said. “Reflect and act on Dr. King’s legacy. We’re here not only to celebrate the great man’s dream, but to live it as well.”

Music was provided by a young, professional Christian band, One Voice.

Diane Chase, a former Civil Rights foot soldier, said Eubanks graduated Excelsior High School in 1955 and graduated Morehouse College in 1959 — where he went to speeches made by King.

Eubanks earned his master’s degree in education from the University of North Florida.

He spent 30 years in St. Johns County schools and started several theater companies.

In his talk, Eubanks used props, as a professor would to make examples for students. At one point he compared unshucked ears of corn to one without its husk and showed that the kernels were different colors.

“Never judge anything by its cover or color,” he said. “Have dreams. But most importantly, follow those dreams. We must not continue to expect exceptions to be made for us. And you must not allow anyone to define you by race.”

He said part of the reason for failure in any community is a lack of initiative, planning and goal-setting.

“We must acquire a reality base and be willing to face the truth,” he said. “Truth is a very bright light. We have a new Three Rs now: respect, responsibility and restraint.”

It took one letter! (To start the ball rolling on the "largest environmental cleanup in history, which is still going on." Keep asking questions!

2012-01-16T15:26:00.000-08:00

Check out the Knoxville News-Sentinel article (below) on our Appalachian Observer newspaper's Freedom of Information Act request, which led to the "largest environmental cleanup in history, which is still going on."

It took a one page letter, which I wrote and our Publisher, Ernie Phillips and I signed. No other journalist or public interest group or government agency would do it.

In dealing with unaccountable organizations, just remember, "Keep asking questions!"

It's what our Founding Fathers had in mind. You'll be glad you did!

Knoxville News Sentinel: Secret Cold War project results in largest US environmental cleanup

2012-01-16T15:25:00.000-08:00

By Frank Munger

Sunday, December 18, 2011

OAK RIDGE — The exuberance of winning World War II — and playing a pivotal role — had barely died down when Oak Ridge received another secret assignment with national security on the line.

The Y-12 plant, which had enriched uranium for the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, was asked to support development of lithium fuel for an arsenal of new super bombs.

These thermonuclear weapons would make the bombs that ended the war look like firecrackers, and they soon became the focus of a spiraling, ferocious arms race with the Soviet Union.

The Oak Ridge plant began the development work in 1950 and within a couple of years started experimenting with different processes to separate isotopes of lithium. The goal was to selectively concentrate the lighter lithium-6 isotope for use in fusion-type weapons, which became known as hydrogen bombs.

The lithium work was code-named "Alloy Development Program."

Most of the processes required the use of mercury, especially Colex (an abbreviation for "column exchange"), which proved to be the most successful. Some of the same big buildings that had been used for uranium enrichment during the Manhattan Project were converted to Colex production facilities.

Millions of pounds of mercury were essential to the project, according to a Y-12 report.

President Dwight Eisenhower signed the executive directives that allowed much of the nation's mercury reserves to be shipped to Oak Ridge in the 1950s.

Mercury is a slippery, elusive metal, and it wasn't contained very well at Y-12. Leaks were commonplace in the pipes that pumped mercury under pressure. There were system failures and waste discharges.

And there were big-time spills. According to documents posted on a Department of Labor website, there were five mercury spills between 1956 and 1966 at Alpha-4 and Alpha-5 — two of the Colex production facilities — that totaled between 285,500 and 500,000 pounds. One of those spills occurred in March 1966 during the removal of processing equipment from Alpha-5.

Plant reports and historical accounts indicate that Y-12 officials were highly aware of mercury's toxicity and took a number of precautions to limit workplace exposures to the metal, which vaporizes at warm temperatures and becomes a breathing hazard. Air sampling was used to evaluate conditions, and workers were reportedly taken out of mercury work areas if multiple tests of their urine showed they'd been overexposed.

Workplace health and safety standards weren't up to today's standards, but they undoubtedly got more emphasis than environmental protection in the 1950s and '60s.

East Fork Poplar Creek received the brunt of discharges. There are varying reports of how much mercury likely entered the creek, but it's estimated at somewhere between 240,000 and 280,000 pounds.

Oak Ridge Historian Bill Wilcox said the big releases of mercury were in the early part of the lithium project.

"The (Colex) plant started in 1955, and in 1958 we changed the process so that the amount was reduced down to a low amount," said Wilcox, who chaired a mercury task force put together by Union Carbide, the government contractor, in 1983.

"The Colex waste-handling was changed to reduce the amount of mercury (lost). We were worrying about it, it turns out, for economic reasons. So we changed the process and got most of that fixed."

Wilcox said it's important to realize that mercury in the environment wasn't considered a big deal in the United States until about 1970, after information spread about the disaster at Minimata, Japan, where thousands of people were affected by methylmercury from a chemical factory that poisoned the fish and shellfish supplies.

Rising concerns

Y-12's lithium project was a secret, as were other classified activities associated with production of nuclear weapons. Lithium processing was halted in 1963, after a glut of the bomb-making material had been stockpiled for future use. But it was another 20 years before the public became aware of the Y-12 work and mercury's large-scale presence in Oak Ridge.

In 1977, Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientist Jerry Elwood authored a report that noted elevated levels of mercury in Poplar Creek fish, and he recommended an investigation of upstream sources in East Fork Poplar Creek. But no action was taken and the report's distribution was limited to internal use.

In 1982, ORNL research biologist Steven Gough took unauthorized samples of vegetation in East Fork and sent them to his brother, who worked at the U.S. Geological Survey in Denver. The samples showed high levels of mercury. Gough left the lab in part, he said, because of the fuss his unapproved research created. While his information was not made public until the next year, it reportedly prompted a formal sampling in East Fork.

In November 1982, based on limited sampling but solid results, the state of Tennessee posted the East Fork Poplar Creek as a health hazard because of mercury pollution.

The news created a buzz of interest, and environmental regulators, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, were starting to get tougher.

At the time, DOE officials said the mercury deposits in East Fork were probably the result of the 1966 spill of 100,000 pounds of mercury at Y-12.

The most shocking news, however, came on May 17, 1983, when the Department of Energy — responding to a Freedom of Information Act request from the Appalachian Observer, a weekly newspaper — released a declassified version of a document that gave a more realistic look at the pollution potential. The report stated that about 2.4 million pounds of mercury had been lost during the operations or was otherwise unaccounted for.

Some of the numbers were later refined and revised downward, but the impact of the mercury revelations was immense and long-lasting.

Suddenly, everything was questioned.

Why hadn't the government told Oak Ridge residents — or environmental regulators, for that matter — about the mercury pollution that unwittingly had been spread around town when the city dredged the creek for flood control and used the sediments as topsoil, even at school sites? What other environmental hazards were under wraps on the sprawling reservation that had been a heavily guarded enclave for nuclear research and production since the wartime Manhattan Project?

Congress wanted to know more, and U.S. Reps. Al Gore Jr. and Marilyn Lloyd, each of whom headed a subcommittee with interest in DOE and the environment, hosted a congressional field hearing in Oak Ridge.

The mercury revelations proved to be a springboard for further environmental investigations, not just at Oak Ridge but at Department of Energy operations around the country — including the Feed Materials Production Center at Fernald, Ohio, the Rocky Flats Plant in Colorado and many other sites.

The legacy of pollution from the government's World War II and Cold War work on nuclear weapons became a national scandal, resulting in the largest environmental cleanup program in U.S. history that's still going on today.
Scripps Lighthouse

© 2012 Scripps Newspaper Group — Online

In the words of our City's patron saint, Saint Augustin of Hippo, "An unjust law is no law at all."

2012-01-15T14:51:00.000-08:00

The patron saint of our Nation's Oldest European-founded City, Saint Augustine of Hippo, wrote that "an unjust law is no law at all. Rulers who enact unjust laws are wicked and unlawful authorities. In The City of God, Saint Augustine explains that a civil authority that has no regard for justice cannot be distinguished from a band of robbers. "Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms?"

THEODORE ROOSEVELT ON SOCIAL, POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC CHANGE

2012-01-15T13:35:00.000-08:00

The credit belongs to the [person] who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Protesters Welcome Vilano Beach PUBLIX, Invite PUBLIX To Pay Florida Farmworkers a Living Wage

2012-01-15T13:08:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, protesters greeted PUBLIX’s new Vilano Beach store with eight hours of protests, starting at 8 AM and ending after 4 PM.
The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW),joined by Occupy St. Augustine, International Workers of the World (IWW) and local faith-based activists, held informational picketing on the sidewalk in front of the PUBLIX at the Vilano Beach Town Center.
Sadly, PUBLIX refuses to join other large organizations, including grocery and fast food chains and the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, in paying one cent more per pound of tomatoes to assure farmworkers a living wage.
PUBLIX customers and employees, with few exceptions, were friendly and courteous. PUBLIX management refused to discuss the issue, refused to accept correspondence and refused to discuss the issues with the CIW. They also refused to accept a jar of pennies offered to help defray the additional penny a pound it would take to pay farmworkers a living wage.
In talking with people, we emphasized that PUBLIX is a good store, and this is our only beef with public.
We got supportive words and gestures from PUBLIX customers.
I observed only a few soreheads (less than ten). Two were one-percenters who actually yelled at us to “get a job.” Another said, “shame on you.” And four said, “Get a life.”
We’re hoping that, when PUBLIX agrees to pay one cent more for pound of tomatoes, that Florida’s farmworkers will “get a life.” Back-breaking stoop labor for piecework is contrary to the genius of a free people – it is immoral for PUBLIX not to agree to pay farmworkers a living wage.
When someone in a military-style assault SUV screams and yells and tells farmworker rights activists to “get a life,” I am wondering what they had in mind? “Get a life” is a cliché, an idiomatic American English free of content, used by four “idiots” (that was the term in ancient Athens term for people who disdained involvement in politics).
The American Heritage Slang Dictionary says “Get a life” means to “Acquire some interests or relationships of one's own. For example, Stop sitting around and complaining—get a life.” [Slang; late 1900s].
None of us were sitting around and complaining – this is our country, and our views will be heard and heeded. Farmworker rights will be respected and not neglected. It is up to us.
Robert Kennedy said in 1966: "It is not enough to allow dissent. We must demand it. For there is much to dissent from. .... We dissent from the fact that millions are trapped in poverty while the nation grows rich. ... We dissent from the conditions and hatreds which deny a full life to our fellow citizens because of the color of their skin. ... We dissent from the monstrous absurdity of a world where nations stand poised to destroy one another, and men must kill their fellow men. ... We dissent from the sight of most of mankind living in poverty, stricken by disease, threatened by hunger and doomed to an early death after a life of unremitting labor. ... We dissent from cities which blunt our senses and turn the ordinary acts of daily life into a painful struggle. ... We dissent from the willful, heedless destruction of natural pleasure and beauty. ... We dissent from all these structures – of technology and of society itself – which strip from the individual the dignity and warmth of sharing in the common tasks of his community and his country."
We’re Americans – and we take care of our own. We don’t leave people behind. We don’t turn our backs on human suffering. We fought a war that ended slavery. We defend farmworkers from slavery. We indict farmers that subject farmworkers to slavery. We don’t tolerate soulless mega-corporations that exploit farmworkers. That’s what distinguishes Real Americans from the people Teddy Roosevlt referred to as “those timid souls” – self-aggrandizing narcissists who have never stood up for anyone’s rights, and don’t give a fig about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Obviously, those four crabby PUBLIX customers who yelled “Get a life” wish us to have crabbed lives like theirs -- materialistic lives that care not a fig for other people's misery.
Authoritarians, they wish to tell us what to say and what to think, and not to care for our fellow man and woman. Assumedly, they are dull Republicans who know not that they know not that they know not – cognitive misers who are part of ROBERT BORK’s AMERICA.
ROBERT BORK is WILLARD MITT ROMNEY’s top legal advisor. My first boss, the late Senator Ted Kennedy, once said, “Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists would be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is often the only protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy."
We’re excited by the positive reactions at PUBLIX’ Vilano Beach store yesterday between 8 AM and 4 PM. As FDR once said, after appearing at Franklin Field in Philadelphia in 1944 (my mother was there),” I felt the crowd, and it warmed me.”
As Arnold Schwartzenegger once said, “We’ll be back!”

Here are photos from other CIW protests at other PUBLIX stores, including photos of Stetson Kennedy picketing, and links to Edward R. Murrow's 1960 CBS documentary, Harvest of Shame (especially for the "lady" who screamed, "Shame on you!":

The late Civil Rights hero Stetson Kennedy protesting PUBLIX earlier this year. Come join us!

PUBLIX is a fine store, and a well-run company. My only beef with PUBLIX -- shared by my mentor, the late KKK-buster Stetson Kennedy -- is that PUBLIX won't agree to pay an additional penny per pound of tomatoes to see that farmworkers are paid a living wage. Other large companies -- including Taco Bell (Yum! Brands) have agreed to the reasonable proposal.

Before he died, earlier this year, Stetson Kennedy was picketing and boycotting PUBLIX.

The late Civil Rights hero Stetson Kennedy protesting PUBLIX earlier this year.

New York Times: The True Cost of Tomatoes

2012-01-15T13:04:00.001-08:00

June 14, 2011, 8:30 pm
The True Cost of Tomatoes
By MARK BITTMAN

Mark Bittman on food and all things related.
Tags:

consumers, Florida, migrant farmworkers, Supermarkets, Tomatoes

Mass-produced tomatoes have become redder, more tender and slightly more flavorful than the crunchy orange “cello-wrapped” specimens of a couple of decades ago, but the lives of the workers who grow and pick them haven’t improved much since Edward R. Murrow’s revealing and deservedly famous Harvest of Shame report of 1960, which contained the infamous quote, “We used to own our slaves; now we just rent them.”

But bit by bit things have improved some, a story that’s told in detail and with insight and compassion by Barry Estabrook in his new book, “Tomatoland.” We can actually help them improve further.

A third of our fresh tomatoes are grown in Florida, and much of that production is concentrated around Immokalee (rhymes with “broccoli”), a town that sits near the edge of the great “river of grass,” or the Everglades, the draining of which began in the late 19th century, thus setting the stage for industrial agriculture. Immokalee is a poor (average annual per-capita income: $8,576), immigrant (70 percent of the population is Latino, mostly Mexican) working town, to the outsider at least a depressing community with few signs of hope.

The tomato fields of Immokalee are vast and surreal. An unplanted field looks like a lousy beach: the “soil,” which is white sand, contains little in the way of nutrients and won’t hold any water. To grow tomatoes there requires mind-boggling amounts of fertilizers, fungicides and pesticides (on roughly the same acreage of tomatoes, Florida uses about eight times as many chemicals as California). The tomatoes are, in effect, grown hydroponically, and the sand seems useful mostly as a medium for holding stakes in place.

Most of the big purchasers, like Wal-Mart and McDonald’s, want firm, “slicing” tomatoes, because their destination is a burger or a sandwich, so the tomatoes are picked at what is called “mature green,” which isn’t mature at all but bordering on it. Tomatoes with any color other than green are too ripe to ship, and left to rot; I’ve posted a couple of pictures I took of those on my blog. The green tomatoes are gassed — “de-greened” is the chosen euphemism — to “ripen” them; the plants themselves are often killed with an herbicide to hasten their demise and get ready for the next crop.

The process, not to put too fine a point on it, is awful, but the demand is there — Florida ships about a billion pounds of tomatoes a year — and the main question has not been quality but fairness to the workers. (Estabrook profiles a successful Florida tomato farmer who’s gone organic, but since it’s inarguable that this is a locale and climate that’s hostile to tomatoes in the first place, that can’t be easy. Here’s the reality: you’re not going to get a billion pounds of good tomatoes out of Florida. Ever.)

Unlike corn and soy, tomatoes’ harvest cannot be automated; it takes workers to pick that fruit. And not only have workers been enslaved, they have been routinely beaten, subject to sexual harassment, exposed to toxic chemicals (Estabrook mercilessly describes the tragic results of this) and forced to wait for hours to find out whether they have work on a given day. Oh, and they’re underpaid.

One of the bright spots, discussed in Estabrook’s book is the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), founded in 1993. The CIW has two major goals: the first is to put the last nail in the coffin of slavery, a condition that sadly still exists not only among farmworkers but others. “And this,” Laura Germino, who has worked on the campaign since its inception, said to me when I visited last month, “is not ‘slavery-like,’ or ‘exploitation’ — it’s actual slavery, as defined by federal law.” (There are super links around this issue on the anti-slavery campaign’s Web site, and reading them is eye-popping.)

You’ve probably heard of the other goal, which is the CIW’s Campaign for Fair Food; it’s garnered as much attention as any labor struggle in the country in recent years, and more on the farmworker front than anything since the early work of Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers.

These outrages have been the CIW’s focus, and the agreement they signed last November with the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange begins to address them: through the core “penny-a-pound” increase in the price wholesale purchasers pay, workers’ incomes could go up thousands of dollars per year. The agreement also provides for a time-clock system in the fields, which has led to a shorter workday and less (unpaid) waiting time; portable shade tents for breaks (unbelievable that this didn’t exist previously — I spent a half-hour in the open fields and began to melt); reduced exposure to pesticides; worker-to-worker education on rights; a new code of conduct for growers with real market consequences if workers’ rights are violated; and more.

The breakthrough for the CIW came in 2005, when after enormous consumer pressure Yum! Brands, which controls Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and KFC, signed the agreement. (And you know what? Good for them.) Since then, Subway, McDonald’s, Burger King, the country’s largest food service operators (Sodexo, Aramark and Compass Group) and Whole Foods have signed as well.

Progress, clearly. What’s missing are traditional supermarket chains, and the CIW has targeted — largely for geographical reasons — Ahold (the parent company of Stop & Shop and Giant); Publix (the dominant chain in Florida); Kroger (next to Wal-Mart the biggest food retailer in the country); and Trader Joe’s, which, in an attempt at “transparency” (odd for a chain known for its secrecy), published a letter explaining why it was refusing to sign the agreement. Really, guys? If McDonald’s and Burger King can sign a labor agreement, it can’t be that onerous; you should do it just for karma’s sake. (The CIW’s response is here.)

Most of us eat or buy industrially produced tomatoes, and it doesn’t seem too much to ask that the people who pick them for us be treated a little more fairly. Speak to your supermarket manager or write to the head of the chain you patronize (the easiest way to do this is to visit this page on the CIW site). Supermarkets, I expect, are as susceptible to public pressure as fast-food chains.

There are few places in the country where migrant and immigrant farmworkers are treated well; in Immokalee, at least, they’re being treated better. Bit by bit.

Correction: An earlier version of this column misstated one of the signatories of the labor agreement. It was Burger King, not Wal-Mart.

IN HAEC VERBA: Unanswered Letter to PUBLIX Chairman Regarding Human Rights for Florida Farm Workers Who Provide PUBLIX' Tomatoes

2012-01-15T13:02:00.000-08:00

J'accuse!

December 21, 2011
Mr. Charles H. Jenkins, Jr., Chairman
Publix Super Markets, Inc.
3300 Publix Corporate Parkway
Lakeland, FL 33811 via fax to 863-284-5532

RE: FAIR TREATMENT OF IMMOKALEE FARM WORKERS; PUBLIC STORE IN VILANO BEACH

Dear Mr. Jenkins:

Your late father stated, “Don't let making a profit get in the way of doing the right thing.” We agree.

Will you please agree to increase the price of tomatoes by one penny per pound, as many other large organizations have done, in order to secure a living wage for farm workers and their families?

My late mentor, Stetson Kennedy, picketed PUBLIX over this issue before he died at nearly 95 years of age. Often called “Florida’s Homer,” Stetson Kennedy infiltrated and helped expose the Ku Klux Klan. Mr. Kennedy actually called me “Stetson Kennedy, Jr.” the second time we met. In his honor and spirit, please expect that people in St. Augustine and St. Johns County will picket your Vilano Beach store opening on January 12-14, 2012. Please don’t play Scrooge with farm workers’ lives.

Will you please join with the Florida Tomato Growers’ Exchange, Whole Foods, McDonald's and Subway to require more humane labor standards from their tomato suppliers and pay a tiny price premium for those more fairly produced tomatoes? These firms also buy only from growers who meet those high standards. Yet Publix has actively resisted join the Fair Food Program. Why? What do you reckon?

People of faith and good will throughout Florida agree: it is time for PUBLIX to respect human rights. I’ve lived in Florida since 1995 and the only problem I’ve ever had with PUBLIX is the farm workers’ issue. PUBLIX is a fine store with good products. Please don’t let the stain of slavery destroy your reputation and your bottom line in the name of expediency.

I look forward to talking with you tomorrow, and to meeting you at the opening of the PUBLIX on Vilano Beach on January 12 and 14th, 2012. In the event that you do not respond affirmatively, please expect pray-ins, picketing and boycotts, in the spirit of Stetson Kennedy, whose courage inspires us all to do better.

Please govern yourself accordingly. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Ed Slavin
Clean Up City of St. Augustine, Florida
www.cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com
Box 3084
St. Augustine, Florida 32085
904-829-3877
215-554-1187 (cellular)

REALITY HELL I: READ ABOUT OSCEOLA CAPTURE SITE, WHICH MAY BE DUG UP BY LOOTERS (DIGGERS) FOR NATIONAL TV PROGRAM -- JUST SAY NO!

2012-01-13T17:33:00.000-08:00

Osceola's capture site hidden

One of Seminoles' greatest leaders betrayed near Wildwood Drive

JENNIFER EDWARDS
Special to the Record

Published Monday, October 19, 2009

A quiet street in the peaceful Wildwood Creek neighborhood leads to a site that marks government betrayal, bloodshed and a fire that consumed a national landmark nearly 170 years ago.

On Oct. 26, 1837, federal troops from Fort Peyton captured one of the government's fiercest enemies in Florida, Seminole war leader Osceola.

For years, Osceola had bedeviled the government's attempts to remove Native Americans from the area. He was taken prisoner under a flag of truce and was imprisoned in the Castillo de San Marcos, where he died shortly afterward.

Fort Peyton, not far from the Wildwood Creek neighborhood, was one of several forts designed to protect St. Augustine during the Second Seminole Indian War. It burned down in 1840.

An unpaved trail now leads from Winterhawk Drive through the forest and ends at a freshly restored historical marker -- the only nod to the fort located here and the area's rich history. The path is unmarked and hard to find.

"Something very important happened there ...," Robin Moore, St. Johns County historic resources coordinator, said of the Fort Peyton site. "St. Augustine knew who Osceola was and people in Central Florida and other places knew who he was ..."

But until this year, not even the marker could bear witness to the life and eventual betrayal of one of the most well-known Indian leaders of the era.

"There was a bunch of bullet holes around the sign and the post was all shot up," explained Kevin Spilling, 17, a Pedro Menendez High School senior and Eagle Scout who organized a project to restore the marker and dress up the site.

In addition to restoring a marker that describes the history of Fort Peyton and mentions Osceola's capture, volunteers from Spilling's troop also mulched the area, added wooden benches and created a planter around another marker.

That marker, a coquina monument erected in 1916, also commemorated Osceola's capture at a nearby site but has long since lost the plate describing that capture.

Spilling, who lives near the markers, said he organized the restoration because when he was growing up, "I wished it was more built up and people had a place to go back there and eat lunch, sit and talk instead of it being all overgrown with weeds."

The actual spot of the Seminole war leader's capture is even more overgrown. According to local tradition, it is located about a mile south of the Fort Peyton site where a trail leads through nearly a third of a mile of underbrush and to another faceless coquina marker. That marker is nearly hidden by palmetto fronds.

But that site may get new life, too, Moore said.

Moore said the marker may be replaced soon as part of an agreement with a potential subdivision developer, and he said St. Johns County also is looking to develop the area around the Fort Peyton marker.

"We've targeted special spots like that for educational development," he said, noting that the area could become part of an interpretive trail.

"You could learn the history of the Seminole war and the activities that went on on the land you are walking," he said.

What the marker says

"Fort Peyton, established by Maj. Gen. Thomas S. Jesup in August 1837 and garrisoned by regular army troops, was one of a chain of military outposts created during the Second Seminole Indian War for the protection of the St. Augustine area.

It consisted of four log houses, built on a hollow square, two occupied by the troops, one by officers and the fourth used as a hospital commissary.

This post was first known as Fort Moultrie, but its name was changed in honor of Lt. Richard H. Peyton, post commander in 1832. The Seminole Indian chief*, Osceola, was captured about a mile south of this site.

Fort Peyton was ordered abandoned by the secretary of war, Joel R. Poinsett, in May 1840. The buildings burned to the ground on February 14, 1842, presumably set afire by an incendiary."

Source: St. Johns County Historical Commission, 1966.

*Note: Osceola was not a chief.

Did you know?

Osceola was born Billy Powell, and of mixed ancestry. He was the son of William Powell, a white trader in the Tallassee, Ala., area and a Native American woman named Polly Copinger.

His name later became Osceola, and was taken from "asi," a black drink and "yahola," or singer.

He was an important war leader, but was never the chief of an Indian tribe.

Source: William and Ellen Hartley, "Osceola, the Unconquered Indian."

REALITY HELL II: DESIREE M. MANDELBAUM TO DIG UP SITE OF FORT PEYTON, LOCATION OF OSCEOLA'S CAPTURE?

2012-01-13T17:12:00.000-08:00

Note to our friends at the SEMINOLE TRIBE, the Discovery Channel, the History Channel and Spike TV:

LA casting Director DESIREE M. MANDELBAUM told me at 8:12 PM EST tonight that “I will not confirm” but “I do not deny nor will I confirm," that she has paid money to the owner of Fort Peyton, the place where Seminole Indian leader Osceola was captured, to allow her to dig up the site.

In the immortal words of Washington Post Managing Editor Benjamin Crowninshield Bradlee during Watergate, “that’s a non-denial denial.”

Look for pickets, protests, lawsuits and legislation to stop this from ever happening.

Support the St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore. www.staugustgreen.com

Stop looters and schlockmeisters and “developers” from destroying our history and nature for profit.

It’s time to preserve our history and nature forever.

DESIREE M. MANDELBAUM, a/k/a "We're professional diggers," proposes a series of looting archaeology and wants to sell it to DISCOVERY CHANNEL, HISTORY CHANNEL OR SPIKE TV.

Read her resume, which is heavy on casting for goober-exploitation "reality shows."

Does she look qualified to cover archaeological or other scientific issues to you? What do you reckon? Listen to the words of DESIREE M. MANDELBAUM:

Former UN Ambassador Andrew Young says that in social activism, it is always important to let the other person “save face.” In the spirit of Andrew Young, I attempted yesterday to engage DESIREE MANDELBAUM about the community values of St. Augustine, Florida about our history and archaelogy.

I politely suggested to DESIREE MANDELBAUM that she film Carl Halbirt and Kathy Deegan, doing professional archaeology digs. MANDELBAUM refused.

I asked about her credentials. MANDELBAUM said, “We are professional diggers. I don’t feel the need to explain myself. When we come out, your town will be very happy. Thanks for the call, Ed.”

DESIREE MANDELBAUM hung up the telephone.

Thinking perhaps DESIREE MANDELBAUM might have been disconnected on her cell phone, I called her back.

Then DESIREE MANDELBAUM said, “We haven’t decided whether to go there or not.” She refused to disclose the names of her production company, her TV network, or their lawyers, saying we hicks and rubes here in St. Augustine, Florida “don’t need to know.”

MANDELBAUM thereupon repeated herself a lot, like a hierarchical authoritarian Republican would do with too much coffee. I said she was inarticulate. Then she said, “You’re being mean to me,” and hung up the telephone again.

Double click.

For more, see prior blog posts.

Activist Post: MITT ROMNEY's BAIN CAPITAL OWNS CLEAR CHANNEL, EMPLOYER OF HATE-SPEWERS LIMBAUGH, HANNITY, BECK, SAVAGE, et al.

2012-01-13T16:35:00.000-08:00

Friday, January 13, 2012

Bain Capital Owns Clear Channel (Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, Etc.)

Michael Snyder, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

Wouldn't it be great if a Republican presidential candidate could just buy the support of just about every major conservative talk show host in America? Well, it may not be as far-fetched as you may think.

Clear Channel owns more radio stations (850) than anyone else in the United States. They also own Premiere Radio Networks, the company that syndicates the radio shows of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck, among others.

Needless to say, Clear Channel basically owns conservative talk radio in the United States. So who owns Clear Channel?

Well, it turns out that Bain Capital is one of the primary owners of Clear Channel. Yes, you read that correctly. The company that Mitt Romney ran for so long is one of the "big bosses" over virtually all conservative talk radio in America.

Of course Mitt Romney is not running Bain Capital anymore. He is a "retired partner", but he still has a huge financial stake in Bain Capital. We're talking about millions upon millions of dollars. If you doubt this, just check out page 34 of this public financial disclosure report. So if you have been wondering why so many conservative talk show hosts are being so incredibly kind to Mitt Romney, this just might be the answer.

In the media world, there is a clear understanding that you simply do not bite the hand that feeds you. Some of the most prominent conservative talk radio hosts are earning tens of millions of dollars a year.

If you were making tens of millions of dollars a year, wouldn't you be very careful to avoid offending your boss?

The deal in which Bain Capital became one of the owners of Clear Channel was initiated just a short time before Mitt Romney's first run for president. The following comes from Wikipedia....

On November 16, 2006, Clear Channel announced plans to go private, being bought out by two private-equity firms, Thomas H. Lee Partners and Bain Capital Partners for $18.7 billion, which is just under a 10 percent premium above its closing price of $35.36 a share on November 16 (the deal values Clear Channel at $37.60 per share).

The deal was finalized in 2008. Today, Bain Capital is still one of the primary owners of Clear Channel.

One of the subsidiaries of Clear Channel is Premiere Radio Networks.

Premiere Radio Networks distributes a whole host of conservative talk radio shows. Everyone in the conservative world knows names such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck. Clear Channel also controls some other conservative talk radio hosts (such as Michael Savage and Mark Levin) that are not part of the Premiere Radio family.

The power that Premiere Radio Networks has is absolutely staggering. The following is directly from the official Clear Channel website....

Premiere Radio Networks Inc., a subsidiary of Clear Channel Communications, syndicates 90 radio programs and services to more than 5,000 radio affiliations and reaches over 190 million listeners weekly. Premiere Radio is the number one radio network in the country and features the following personalities: Rush Limbaugh, Jim Rome, Casey Kasem, Ryan Seacrest, Glenn Beck, Bob (Kevoian) & Tom (Griswold), Delilah, Steve Harvey, Blair Garner, George Noory, John Boy and Billy, Big Tigger, Dr. Dean Edell, Bob Costas, Sean Hannity and others. Premiere is based in Sherman Oaks, California, with 13 offices nationwide.

So do you think that any of those hosts is going to risk viciously attacking Mitt Romney and Bain Capital during this election season?

Not likely.

One of the controversies that has plagued Premiere Radio Networks in recent years has been the uproar over their use of paid actors to call in to their radio shows.

The following comes from Wikipedia....

Clear Channel, through its subsidiary, Premiere Radio Networks, auditions and hires actors to call in to talk radio shows and pose as listeners in order to provide shows, carried by Clear Channel and other broadcasters, with planned content in the form of stories and opinions. The custom caller service provided by Premiere Radio ensures its clients they won't hear the same actor's voice for at least two months in order to appear authentic to listeners who might otherwise catch on.

So perhaps that explains where some of the "Romney callers" come from.

There is nothing illegal about what Romney and Bain Capital have done, but it sure does not pass the "smell test".

Conservative talk radio has the potential to sway millions of conservative voters in one direction or another, and it is just not proper for Bain Capital and Romney to have such an overpowering financial interest in conservative talk radio.

And, yes, Mitt Romney is still bringing in lots of money from Bain Capital. The following comes from a Wikipedia article about Mitt Romney....

At the time of his departure, Romney negotiated an agreement with Bain Capital that allowed him to receive a passive profit share as a retired partner in some Bain Capital entities, including buyout and investment funds.^[62]^[57] With the private equity business continuing to thrive, this deal would bring him millions of dollars in income each year.^[57] As a result of his business career, by 2007 Romney and his wife had a net worth of between $190 and $250 million, most of it held in blind trusts.^[62] An additional blind trust existed in the name of the Romneys' children and grandchildren that was valued at between $70 and $100 million as of 2007.^[63] The couple's net worth remained in the same range as of 2011, and was still held in blind trusts.

In addition, Bain Capital and Bain & Company continue to pour huge amounts of money into Romney's campaign coffers.

Just check out the following list of the biggest donors to the Romney campaign. These numbers come from opensecrets.org....

Goldman Sachs $367,200
Credit Suisse Group $203,750
Morgan Stanley $199,800
HIG Capital $186,500
Barclays $157,750
Kirkland & Ellis $132,100
Bank of America $126,500
PriceWaterhouseCoopers $118,250
EMC Corp $117,300
JPMorgan Chase & Co $112,250
The Villages $97,500
Vivint Inc $80,750
Marriott International $79,837
Sullivan & Cromwell $79,250
Bain Capital $74,500
UBS AG $73,750
Wells Fargo $61,500
Blackstone Group $59,800
Citigroup Inc $57,050
Bain & Co $52,500

As with anything, whenever you want to get to the real truth you just need to follow the money.

Earlier this week, Sean Hannity told Rick Perry that his attacks on Mitt Romney's time at Bain Capital sounded like something that "Occupy Wall Street" would say.

Just the other day, Rush Limbaugh compared Rick Perry to Fidel Castro and rabidly defended Mitt Romney on his radio program....

'There’s no way you can try to dress that up,' Limbaugh fumed. 'I don’t understand it. Well, politically I understand it, but that’s just absurd. It’s sad. ‘Cause I really, really, really like Rick Perry! I really do. I had such hopes! I did. I’ll tell you, I did, but all of this talk about “corporate raiders,” and as I listen to politicians start talking about capitalism, lights are going off in my head. Maybe they don’t really know what it is. Maybe they’re under some misconception about what capitalism is, because this characterization of it? A distinction with venture capitalism and vulture capitalism? This bite from Perry doesn’t compute.'

So why are these conservative talk show hosts defending Mitt Romney so furiously?

I think now we know.

It is all about the money.

When you have enough money, you can get conservative talk show hosts to promote an extremely liberal candidate.

Yes, of course Bain Capital does not "control" what these talk show hosts say.

Yes, of course some of the talk show hosts toss some light criticism at Romney from time to time.

But they simply do not go after Romney like they should.

The truth is that Mitt Romney is really a Democrat that is masquerading as a Republican. When you closely examine his record, he is very similar to Obama.

There is no way in the world that any self-respecting conservative should ever cast a single vote for him.

But right now Mitt Romney is running away with the race for the Republican nomination.

If Republicans can be fooled this badly, is there any hope for the future of the Republican Party?

This article first appeared here at the American Dream. Michael Snyder is a writer, speaker and activist who writes and edits his own blogs The American Dream and Economic Collapse Blog. Follow him on Twitter here.

Click Here to Watch C-SPAN/Tavis Smiley's George Washington University Forum on Poverty in America

2012-01-13T15:43:00.000-08:00

Awesome program about the poverty of power in America and its refusal to do anything about the scourge of poverty!

Washington, DC
Thursday, January 12, 2012

Panelists discuss a recent report from Indiana University on how poverty is changing in America. Participants include Princeton professor Cornel West, TV host Suze Orman, filmmaker Michael Moore, and author Barbara Ehrenreich. Tavis Smiley moderates the discussion.

Mr. Smiley also hosts “The Tavis Smiley Show” on PBS and co-hosts “Smiley & West” on Public Radio International.

USDOJ Press Release: Former SEC Enforcer Settles Conflict of Interest Charges w/ $50,000 Fine

2012-01-13T15:40:00.000-08:00

Former SEC Head of Enforcement for the Fort Worth Office Settles Conflict of Interest Allegations

U.S. Attorney’s Office January 13, 2012

Eastern District of Texas (409) 839-2538

PLANO, TX—Spencer Barasch, 54, of Dallas, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas have entered into a settlement agreement today resolving federal conflict of interest allegations arising from Barasch’s representation of Stanford Financial Group, announced Eastern District of Texas U.S. Attorney John M. Bales. Barasch has agreed to pay a fine of $50,000, which is the maximum civil fine amount for a violation of 18 U.S.C. 207.

According to the settlement agreement, Barasch served as the head of enforcement for the Fort Worth Regional Office of the Securities and Exchange Commission from approximately 1998 through April 2005. As head of enforcement, Barasch was responsible for the review, oversight, and approval of matters under investigation. It is alleged that during Barasch’s tenure, Stanford Financial Group made false material representations and omissions of material fact to numerous investors that caused significant financial losses to those investors. It is alleged that Barasch had substantial participation with the Stanford Financial Group investigation while at the SEC: specifically, it is alleged that in August 1998, Barasch directed a preliminary SEC investigation into the activities of Stanford Financial Group to be closed; that in December 2002, Barasch declined a referral from his examination staff to investigate the activities of Stanford Financial Group; and that in fall 2003, Barasch declined to open an investigation into the activities of Stanford Financial Group. Barasch subsequently left the SEC for private practice in April 2005.

Notwithstanding his supervisory position at the SEC and oversight of the investigation of Stanford Financial Group, which restricted him from future private representation of Stanford Financial Group before the SEC, as well as his having been verbally informed that he was unable to represent Stanford Financial Group due to a permanent conflict of interest, it is alleged that Barasch represented Stanford Financial Group in connection with SEC proceedings between September 29, 2006, and December 18, 2006, and made, with the intent to influence, a communication to the SEC. Despite his efforts, Barasch did not obtain any confidential information from the SEC.

Barasch has denied any allegations of wrongdoing.

In assessing the settlement agreement, U.S. Attorney Bales announced that: “We are committed to ensuring that former federal government attorneys and employees adhere to the rigorous ethical standards imposed upon them by law. In this instance, the SEC ethics program worked and Barasch’s misguided attempt to represent Stanford Financial Group had no lasting consequence. Even so, there must be zero tolerance for ethical missteps. Today’s settlement agreement demonstrates that we will hold those that shirk their professional responsibilities accountable for their conduct.”

This case was investigated by special agents with the FBI with the assistance of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The settlement was negotiated by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Shamoil T. Shipchandler and L. Frank Coan, Jr. with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Texas on behalf of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas.

Awesome Stuart Korfhage Column on Tim Tebow

2012-01-13T15:23:00.001-08:00

Stuart Korfhage column: Tebow still playing like he did when he belonged to St. Johns County

Posted: January 13, 2012 - 12:02am

Back | Next

Record file photo

Tim Tebow was one of Nease's top rebounders.

By STUART KORFHAGE

stuart.korfhage@staugustine.com

Before his name was a verb, before he took over nearly every discussion about pro football and before he crossed over from star athlete to celebrity, Tim Tebow was just a kid with a football in his hand.

How lucky we were that kid came of age right in front of our eyes in St. Johns County.

The Tebow phenomenon is absolutely out of control right now after the former Nease star led the Denver Broncos to an overtime victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers in the first round of the playoffs last week.

If Tebow somehow pushes the Broncos past the heavily favored New England Patriots on Saturday, the excitement might cause a Twitter meltdown. The company has reported that Tebow spawned 9,420 tweets per second during last week’s game.

It’s crazy, isn’t it?

And yet it’s almost impossible to be surprised.

Those of us who were at any of those Nease-St. Augustine games during the Tebow years understand. Even if you absolutely hated Nease, you couldn’t help but be wowed by Tebow.

And even if you hated him on the field, there is something wrong with you if you hated him off of it.

I saw people wearing St. Augustine shirts asking for Tebow autographs after those heart-breaking defeats.

And a crying Tebow obliged many of them.

It’s hard to have perspective about something while it is happening, but I think most of us knew what a special talent Tebow was even in high school.

There is absolutely nobody to compare him to in my experience as a sports writer or even a sports fan.

And if you spent five minutes around the guy, you realized he was truly the fun-loving, yet hard-charging athlete you saw on the field.

By the time Tebow was a junior, tales of his prowess had started to leak outside the county. A lot of people would show up at games to see if the reality lived up to the legend.

I used to love meeting people who got to see Tebow play for the first time. Anyone who didn’t walk away feeling amazed just wasn’t watching — or wasn’t being honest with himself.

People would sometimes look at me in surprise when Tebow would do the things Tebow does.

“He does this every week,” I would say.

That’s why I’ve never been surprised by the fame Tebow has achieved.

I know a lot of people are behind him because of the way he constantly puts his Christian faith on display.

But he’s not the first to do that. He’s just the first to be noticed by the whole world. The reason we keep paying attention to Tebow is that he’s still doing his job with the same flair, enthusiasm and abandon as he did when he was a high school kid breaking in his first razor.

Tebow plays football like it’s a game, not a war, not a dance contest.

He plays football the way you used to play with your brother in the backyard.

He plays the way he played when he was 16 and he was still all ours.

Click here to view resume of DESIREE M. MANDELBAUM, a/k/a "We're professional diggers," whose series threatens to loot St. Augustine's archaeology

2012-01-13T14:59:00.001-08:00

I politely suggested to DESIREE MANDELBAUM that she film Carl Halbirt and Kathy Deegan, doing professional archaeology digs. MANDELBAUM refused.

I asked about her credentials. MANDELBAUM said, “We are professional diggers. I don’t feel the need to explain myself. When we come out, your town will be very happy. Thanks for the call, Ed.”

DESIREE MANDELBAUM hung up the telephone.

Thinking perhaps DESIREE MANDELBAUM might have been disconnected on her cell phone, I called her back.

Double click.

For more, see prior blog posts.

Senator Ted Kennedy's 1994 TV commercials told the truth about MITT ROMNEY's vulture capitalism, Social Darwinism and sexism, profiteering from misery

2012-01-13T14:54:00.000-08:00

Los Angeles Times on Supreme Court's dangerous 8-1 precedent in favor of mandatory, cramdown arbitration of consumer contracts

2012-01-13T14:31:00.000-08:00

Give consumers their day in court

A string of Supreme Court rulings in favor of companies that force wronged consumers into arbitration instead of allowing them to pursue lawsuits shows change is needed. A Senate bill aims to do that.

By David Lazarus

January 13, 2012

The Supreme Court once again gave its backing this week to the notion that businesses can deny consumers the right to file lawsuits and can instead require any disputes to be mediated by an arbitrator.

The high court overturned an earlier ruling by a U.S. appeals court in San Francisco that the 1996 Credit Repair Organizations Act prevented so-called arbitration clauses in certain agreements.

Writing for the court majority in the 8-1 decision, Justice Antonin Scalia said it wasn't Congress' explicit intention to prohibit arbitration of disputes when it set rules for companies that claimed to be able to improve people's credit scores.

"Had Congress meant to prohibit these very common provisions, it would have done so in a manner much more direct" than what was included in the 1996 law, he said.

I'm no attorney, but the language of the law seems pretty clear. It says that credit repair firms must inform consumers that "you have a right to sue a credit repair organization that violates the Credit Repair Organizations Act."

Scalia and the court majority interpreted this as meaning consumers have a right to be so informed, but not to actually file suit — a bizarre distinction.

In any case, the conservative-leaning court has made clear where it stands on mandatory arbitration. It ruled in a 5-4 decision last April that AT&T could block customers from filing suit and could require them to arbitrate disputes.

The ruling gave a green light to all businesses — phone companies, cable companies, credit card companies — that want to avoid individual lawsuits and potentially costly class actions by customers.

Businesses prefer arbitration because settlements are generally limited and because professional arbitrators, who are typically paid by the company in the dispute, tend to favor businesses. It's a classic example of not biting the hand that feeds.

This week's court decision appears to be limited to credit repair companies, but it only reinforces the position that all companies, and particularly those in the financial services field, can deny customers the right to a lawsuit or trial.

As it happens, I received a letter the other day from Michael Cornwell of Pasadena, who passed along one of a series of hard-sell "notices" he's received from a Texas company called CreditArbitrators.

The notices state that Cornwell is carrying as much as $30,000 in debt, and say he has only a short amount of time to contact CreditArbitrators and "activate a debt mediation plan."

Cornwell, 78, told me he'd be nervous about such warnings except for the fact that "our credit card balances have long been paid off."

Curious, I contacted CreditArbitrators and spoke with the company's manager, John Dodson. He acknowledged that some people can be spooked by the official-looking solicitations sent out by CreditArbitrators' marketers.

"Their job is to drive phone calls in," Dodson said. "That's what they do."

He speculated that the marketer who's been chasing after Cornwell "may be using old information."

CreditArbitrators isn't a credit repair firm. Instead, the company focuses on negotiating with creditors to reduce the amount of money people owe. Dodson said about $201 million worth of debt has been addressed by CreditArbitrators since 1997.

And how much will this service run you? The company charges a flat rate of 12% of whatever you owe at the outset of the settlement process. Thus, a $10,000 balance will cost $1,200 to reduce, on top of whatever you end up paying to creditors.

CreditArbitrators' website says that "no particular results are guaranteed." The disclaimer appears at the very bottom of the site in a lighter, barely legible font.

But don't think about suing if you feel like you've been misled after making regular monthly payments to the company. CreditArbitrators has a clause in its contract denying customers the right to sue and requiring arbitration for any disputes.

The Supreme Court has made clear where it stands. Now it's up to lawmakers to level the playing field.

The Arbitration Fairness Act — S. 987 — was introduced last year by Sens. Al Franken (D-Minn.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), and by Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) in the House. It would amend the Federal Arbitration Act to invalidate all arbitration clauses in consumer and employment contracts.

The bill hasn't gone anywhere since it was unveiled in May. Its corporate opponents, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have lobbied against it.

So who speaks for consumers here? Clearly it's not the Supreme Court. And it's not the deep-pocketed business community. And, at least so far, it's not Congress.

If there's going to be change, it'll be up to you to let your representatives know that you support the right to a trial by jury, as guaranteed by the 7th Amendment to the Constitution, and you oppose efforts to deny you that right.

Businesses say that arbitration is a fair, fast and effective process. If so, then it's perfectly reasonable that consumers have this as an option when things go sour with a company.

But it shouldn't be the only option.

Maybe we could take up the matter with an arbitrator.

David Lazarus' column runs Tuesdays and Fridays. He also can be seen daily on KTLA-TV Channel 5. Send your tips or feedback to david.lazarus@latimes.com.

Heartless Justice Department Lawyers Insouciant About Senator John Edwards' Rights

2012-01-13T13:33:00.001-08:00

Someone in the Justice Department Public Integrity Section in Washington, D.C. needs to have a talk with their psychiatrist, priest, rabbi or minister. It seems that former Senator John Edwards needed more time to prepare for trial because of vast quantities of paper and electronic documents obtained in discovery. Our government actually opposed the motion.

That is contrary to the genius of a free people.

Not only is DOJ putting on trial the one and only 2008 presidential candidate who cared about inequality, in a questionable case brought subject to a new legal theory.

But DOJ actually wanted to deny Edwards adequate time to prepare his defense. That is cruelly unfair, but all too typical of government lawyers, who can be incredibly overbearing, trying to grind less powerful parties into the dirt.

Whenever I tried cases against government (or corporate) lawyers on behalf of whistleblowers, I found them all too often lacking in humanity. Whether they were Department of Energy EPA, NASA, TVA or private sector defense lawyers, they were too often soulless and hateful, only too happy to collect raises and bonuses and promotions and partnerships for violating peoples' rights.

Former United States Senator Johnny Reid Edwards was indicted on June 3, 2011 for six felony and misdemeanor counts arising out of almost $1 million that rich contributors gave to help hide his pregnant mistress during and after his 2008 presidential candidacy.

At least DOJ agreed to Senator Edward' request to reschedule his upcoming criminal trial on account of life-threatening condition that required heart surgery. The new Judge assigned to the case has granted the motion.

I wish John Edwards well during his surgery and wish him a speedy recovery.

I hope the jury does justice. There's not nearly enough -- not nearly enough -- justice in our Nation and planet at this time.

What do y'all reckon?

Democracy on the March; Right-Wing Dupery, Kookery and Nincompoopery on the Defensive

2012-01-13T12:39:00.001-08:00

It's another beautiful day in a beautiful place. There is good cause for celebration today.

Our City of St. Augustine is recovering from years of mismanagement and corruption.

Our City just won two (2) Department of Transportation grants – totaling $903,000 -- to reunite our Bayfront and Castillo with the rest of our historic downtown. Winning grants is a wonderful way to celebrate the fine work of our new City Manager, John Regan, who is committed to making St. Augustine a better place for ALL.

Right wing dupery, kookery and nincompoopery have been rejected. Where once the former City Manager refused to apply for grants (or his nephew missed deadines for them), today, our City is partnering with the U.S. Department of the Interior and the Transportation.

As Mayor Joseph Boles said in a press release, ““I am overjoyed …It is exciting that the federal government is partnering with us to tell the nation’s oldest story. Our goal is to provide a visitor experience that is safe, accommodating and will lead to a fulfilling experience for everyone.”

There are those in our community – including Republican State Committeeman RANDY COVINGTON – who disdain federal grants – COVINGON has told state and county legislators that local governments should not apply for grants. That’s typical of the nuttiness emitted by the Tea Party.

Partnering with the National Park Service and Department of Transportation will help bring about the St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore. www.staugustgreen.com

Like federal grants, the St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore makes “angry” the tiny group of misbehaving St. Augustine Tea Party and radical Republican apparatchiks, the successors to the ideological perversions of the Ku Klux Klan.

Former St. Johns County Committee Chairman Ben Rich told Folio Weekly that St. Johns Count is “one of the last bastions of the KKK,” but I seriously doubt the KKK will ever again win another election here. There are more of us than there are of them.

But sadly, on November 1, 2011 – a date that will live in infamy – our County Commissioners showed a negative “profile in courage” by rejecting the park idea, based upon inane ranting from Tea Party member COVINGTON, et al,. who compared environmental activists Robin Nadeau (recently deceased), Judith Seraphin, Faye Armitage and me to Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels, claiming that a National Park and Seashore is Communist and Fascist.

Our governments locally and nationally are too sensible to listen for too long to bigots, bullies and cognitive misers, poor misguided souls who know not that they know not that they know not.

Environmental Racism is going out of style in St. Augustine and St. Johns County.

Civil Rights violations are no longer being tolerated here. Of course, our St. Augustine Police headquarters is still named for Virgil Stuart, KKK-empowering Police Chief who helped the KKK harass protesters here, and called Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. an “outside agitator.” (That’s the same kind of cheesy rhetoric that our local Tea Party and Republican Party use today). But Civil Rights, Equality and Diversity are on the ascendancy.

The tawdry, transparent, tedious, tendentious Tea Party and Republican plot to slash minority voting strength fizzled. We beat them 9-1 by vote of the St. Johns County Commission and School Board last month.

Riberia Street is being fixed – ALL of it.

West Augustine is getting water and sewer utilities – at last.

We now have two Civil Rights monuments.

We’re getting a National Civil Rights Museum.

We’re working to stop a Hollywood production company from looting our archaeology with an inane TV series on “diggers.”

We’re working to stop the arrests of musicians and artists on St. George Street and our Plaza, and to end the reign of ruin when a couple beastly commercial landlords bossed and bullied First Amendment rights and City Hall in the name of their own bigotry.

Through the grace of God, and with the support of all of the good people here, we’re going to get a St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore. www.staugustgreen.com

We shall overcome.

RUSH LIMBAUGH'S EMPLOYER ACQUIRED BY BAIN CAPITAL (CO-FOUNDED BY MITT ROMNEY)

2012-01-13T12:10:00.000-08:00

BANE CAPITAL has acquired CLEAR CHANNEL COMMUNICATIONS, which means it now owns RUSH LIMBAUGH, who is paid $50,000,000 per year to spew hatred.

IN HAEC VERBA: "Angry" Republican and Tea Party Messages Sent to School Board Members on Redistricting, Demanding to Slash Minority Voting Influence

2012-01-13T11:44:00.000-08:00

WILLIAM KORACH: "Angry" and "resent[ful]"

Last month, nine out of ten members of our St. Johns County Commission and School Board roundly rejected Republican and Tea Party efforts to violate our Fifteenth Amendment and the Voting Rights Act by diluting minority voting strength in District 2, which embraces both the Town of Hastings and West Augustine.

It takes a village.

American Legion Post 194, the NAACP and other progressives exposed the scheme.

Only after Judith Seraphin and I complained to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the Justice Department did the School Board support the status quo, against efforts to divide two related communities from each other, which would have given African-Americans less than 10% of the voters in District 2.

One School Board member (WILLIAM FEHLING, R-PONTE VEDRA), voted in favor of the Tea Party and Republican demand to destroy minority strength. Four other school board members listened to reason and rightly changed their minds. I salute them.

This week, the School Board finally provided documents that I had requested last year under the Open Records Act. The documents illustrate the pressures upon our School Board from those misguided souls who wanted to suppress African-American voting rights in a district that was once segregated by State law and local practice, and is under a consent decree with the United States District Court.

One of the E-mails refers to the “ACLU,” which never took a position.

Both of the E-mails are illustrative of the empty and inflammatory rhetoric that is spewed by those who would still divide our community and violate the Constitution of the United States. Those who tried to bully our County into violating the Fifteenth Amendment curiously used the term “bully” and “power play” to describe those who supported maintaining the status quo (14% African-American residency in District 2). Listen to their anger. Learn from them.

Below is the text of two of those E-mails (the first from a Tea Party member and the second from the “publisher” of an Internet website attacking school systems for respecting diversity and equality):

Text of first irascible E-mail:

As a citizen of St. Johns County I want to thank you for sticking to your vote of Map C revised and to let you know that you have many more citizens standing with you than you probably know about. We admire you and thank you for not allowing the BOCC to intimidate (sic) and bully (sic) you into changing your mind. Your hard work with the St. Johns County School Board is very appreciated.

Stand firm, thank you,

Judy Mabry

Text of second irascible E-mail:

Dear Mrs. Wright; (sic)

As a resident in your school district, I want you to know that I support Map C, that (sic) was approved for the benefit of ALL (sic) of the county school families. I resent the interference (sic) of the outsiders (sic) to play (sic) a race card (sic) where no racial issues exist. (sic)

I also resent what appears to be a pure power play (sic) by the ACLU (sic) and other outsider (sic) as there is no apparent benefit to anyone by their scheme (sic). I am also angry with the County Commissioners who support the new gerrymandered (sic) map J in an attempt to appease outsiders where there is no issue at all.

Bill

William Korach

Publisher

The Report Card

www.thereportcard.org

406 misty Morning Lane

St. Augustine, FL 32080

ROBIN NADEAU CELEBRATION OF LIFE ON JANUARY 23, 2011

2012-01-13T07:17:00.000-08:00

Dear Democrats,.
Sue Nadeau asked me to forward information concerning arrangements for Robin's memorial service. Stephen and Sue also want to thank everyone for your kind messages and have come to realize how respected and loved Robin is by so many of her friends.

A mass will be celebrated for Robin at St. Anastasia Catholic Church, 5205 A1A S, St. Augustine Beach, FL., 32080 at 9:00 a.m. Monday, January 23rd.

Following the ceremony, at 10:30 a.m., all are invited to attend a "Celebration of Life" at Amici's Italian Restaurant, 1915 A1A S (corner of SR 312 & A1A S), St. Augustine, 32080. We will all have an opportunity to remember a remarkable lady whose grace and charm captivated whomever she met. This will also be a great time to share memories, stories, photos, and memorabilia.

Robin is so very popular, and many friends have already expressed their condolences. However, Sue has no idea how many people will be coming to Amici's after Church. To give the family a general idea of how many will be attending, we would appreciate it if you would call the Democratic Office at 825-2336 or e-mail us so that we can give Sue an estimate by Monday afternoon.

Sue gathered the many folders containing Robin's letters, memos, and notes, and came across one that expresses "Robin's wish to be remembered with love, understanding, and humor." Oh, how Robin emanated those traits throughout her lifetime as an activist for so many causes!

Her family wants so much to show their gratitude to her many friends and to allow Robin's memory to be cherished. Because of Robin's involvement in so many organizations and her love of the environment, Florida's flowers, and work with the beautification society, donations in Robin's memory can be made to the City of St. Augustine Beach Tree Fund. Checks may be sent to St. Augustine Beach City Hall, 2200 A1A s, St. augustine, FL 32080.

In Caren Goldman's book, Restoring Life's Missing Pieces, she cites an excerpt from Ray Bradury's novel Farenheit 451 that approriately applies to our Robin,

"Everyone must leave something behind when he dies. . . . A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there."

--Annette Cappella, Chair

Florida Public Archaeology Network Responds to Hollywood Schlock -- JUST SAY NO to Offer to Plunder St. Augustine's Archaeology for TV Info-tainment

2012-01-12T14:29:00.001-08:00

Florida Public Archaeology Network - Northeast Region
Hi Desiree, we are not able to assist. It's sounds like yours is a scavenging project for the sake of finding "stuff." Without a research question, the concept in archaeological terms is unethical. Without a city permit (yes, even some private property in St. Aug) it is illegal. Might I suggest a show where you shadow our city archaeologist for a week? Carl Halbirt does amazing work and can best contextualize the city's buried past. I can give you his contact info if you are interested. SM
January 2 at 6:27pm · 3
Tanya Peres Lemons Archaeological sites are not Hollywood stages and artifacts are not stage props. This is an ill-conceived show idea.
January 7 at 8:25am · 1

Congratulations, City of St. Augustine, On Winning $903,000 Paul Sarbanes Transit In Parks Grant

2012-01-12T12:54:00.000-08:00

We did it.

Our City of St. Augustine just won $903,000 in Paul Sarbanes Transit in Parks grants from the U.S. Department of Transportation. Why? For improvements to link our Bayfront to our Historic Downtown better. Way to go!

This grant should help enhance our visitor experience in time for the 450th anniversary of St. Augustine (2015), the 500th anniversary of Spanish Florida (2013), and the 50th anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act (2014).

Of course, there are a few nattering nabobs of negativism (the St. Augustine Tea Party and radical Republican State Commiteeman RANDY COVINGTON) who told our State Legislative Delegation last fall that our local governments should not apply for federal grants.

In fact, once upon a time, our City didn't bother to apply for federal grants, fearing greater accountability under a prior City Manager. Those days are over.

Vive la différence!

PROGRESS SINCE 2006 -- MUCH REMAINS TO BE DONE TODAY TO PROTECT OUR HISTORY AND NATURE IN NATION'S OLDEST CITY

2012-01-12T12:53:00.000-08:00

This blog started on Earth Day in 2006, in response to illegal dumping by our City.

We are overcoming Environmental Racism in our City.

Riberia Street is being fixed – ALL of it.

West Augustine is getting water and sewer utilities – finally.

We have two civil rights monuments in our Slave Market Square.

We’re getting a National Civil Rights Museum.

We’re working tirelessly to get a St. Augustine National Historical Park and Seashore.

This blog continues to be a strong advocate to preserve, protect and defend the history, nature and civil rights in St. Augustine, Florida.

Toward that end, this blog has about 1000 measured page views each week, with 272,341 as of today, with many more visits that are unmeasured due to technical limitations. The visits come from every state and every continent -- the whole world is watching our progress.

I am very concerned about a proposed Hollywood TV film crew proposal for amateur digging – looting – of St. Augustine’s archaeology treasures. Please see below.

To share your concerns, please contact me at EASlavin@aol.com

Or E-mail desireemandelbaum@gmail.com or call 818-730-9125.

DESIREE MANDELBAUM has stated on the Florida Public Archaeology Network Facebook website:

Desiree Mandelbaum

Hi Guys,

My name is Desiree Mandelbaum, and I am a casting producer in Los Angeles. I am seeking Property Owners for a Historical Artifact Recovery TV Show in Saint Augustine. I am actually going to fly out this weekend. Was hoping you could help us spread the word.

Its a Major cable television show "The Recovery Project" (working title) is now seeking property/homeowners to appear on TV. This is a historical artifact recovery show. We find artifacts by digging in yards, parking lots, basements - anywhere objects might be buried. Any little thing can help us tell a story, from bottle caps to bullets... you name it!

We are looking for property owners, and their properties, to appear on the show in order to help us tell a story. We believe there are artifacts in your area and we need your help to recreate the history of the town.

If you are interested please give me a call.

Desiree Mandelbaum
Casting Producer
"Recovery Project"
desireemandelbaum@gmail.com

MANDELBAUM's other ouvres include THE BIGGEST LOSER, a program about people who obtain food by "dumpster-diving," and another about MILFs, about which she posted on the Internet:
TRUE LIFE: I HAVE A HOT MOM "NOW CASTING"
Is your mother annoyingly hot? Do you constantly get remarks from friends -- or even worse, your significant other -- about how attractive she is? Do you feel like people come over to your house just to gawk at her? Does she flaunt her looks and embarrass you in the process? Do you get jealous and feel like you're living in her shadow? Do you overcompensate and attempt to hide or downplay your looks? Or do you aspire to be as hot as she is?

If you appear to be between the ages of 15-22, and would like to share your story, send an email to hotmom@mtvn.com and be sure to include your name, age, telephone number, and a picture of you and your mom.

Desiree Mandelbaum
Casting Director
Castingcookie@gmail.com